i understand the appeal and benefits of running at at home server, but I just use a hosting company
pay up front for 2 years of service, get free domain renewal and proxy and it boils down to less than 5 bucks a month for quality uptime on a fast pipe and let someone else who is obligated by contract do all the bs maintenance work

yea maybe I cant run my own quake server with it, but being connected to a linux box with ssh and all the usual stuff on a oc480,0001,1000,8 and hassle free just works better for me

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The server we're discussing is hosting abandonware. Most real web hosts won't allow that on their server, so he has to run it himself.

Once I'm done at the university, I will likely need to discontinue having my own server, as I'll have an electric bill, and a slower network connection. The extend of my shell use tends to be screen+irssi so a system like sdf.lonestar.org would be suitable for that, and I could easily host my website somewhere else, or simply discontinue the use of my own website in the way I use it now.
With the laptop or another low-power device (dectop, anything atom based) as a server I'd probably be okay to host little things out of my home. There's no real reason my personal blog needs to be on a particularly fast connection, except that it makes getting slashdotted so much more fun.

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We're still not talking about huge amounts of power here. You guys must have really expensive electricity or something.

At the apartment where I live we don't have individual electric meters. They meter the whole complex, and then we pay a sub-divided rate based on the square footage of the apartment as well as the number of occupants. My entire utilities bill (includes water, sewage, electric, trash, and gas) is never more than $100/mo even in the summer. We have chilled water air conditioning though instead of individual compressors so I think that saves money as well.

I could run several servers and basically the entire complex would be subsidizing those servers. I only have a 1.5 Mbps upload though, but it is a static IP.