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NEC Launches "PowerMate Eco" Green PC
jdstahl writes "NEC has just released the PowerMate Eco, billed as the world's first environmentally-friendly PC. Based on a 900 MHz Transmeta Crusoe (thanks Linus!), it is ultra-compact, ultra low power, and nearly silent. Its motherboard contains no lead, and the case is made from recycled plastic. Its expandability is limited, so this is probably not a geek-box, but it seems like an appealing choice for Joe Desktop."
Is it biodegradable?
Ok so the motherboard is lead free as is the tft boron free. So what about all the nasty chemicals used to build components? what about when the machine reaches end of life? where will it go? Sounds like marketing FUD to me, although hopefully this is a step in the right direction I doubt it really is a "green" pc.
Does anyone know how to recycle a used and discarded CDRW? Seriously. How many of these get thrown out yearly now and are they just sitting in landfills taking up space or are they recyclable?
Also applies to all those AOL CDs.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
24" CRT monitor! Sure, the lights still dim when I turn it on, but Man, I'll bet bluecurve will look mighty perty!
My sig hates me. That's ok, I never cared for it much anyway.
I was under the impression that there's more than lead that's a problem in motherboards.
1. Create enviro friendly PC.
2. Pray to god, rich Green Peace Loving geeks didn't all buy MACs.
At $1600*, I don't see this being for "Joe Desktop" either. Maybe corporations will buy them for energy and space savings or your average home user will like the "green" aspect, but there a lot of other, cheaper options. Hopefully it does well, but it's the old "too expensive for the non-enthusiast, too limited for the power freak" problem.
* Price from PCConnection here.
"When it rains, it pours." --Morton's Salt
It looks like the cpu is in the base of the monitor. When the CPU is outdated, can I use the screen with another computer? If I can't then it doesn't seem very evironment-friendly.
Are Transmeta microprocessors manufactured in a particularly environment friendly way?
Why is NuCycle plastic good?
Read Epic the first RPG novel.
Well for CD's in general (apart from the usual drink coaster option), they're great for agricultural use with regard to scarecrows... string loads of CD's on one and they move in a gentle breeze (as well as the reflectiveness of them) and frighten off any birds.
Although the scarecrow to CD ratio may not be enough to deal with a minute amount of those damn AOL CD's floating around the planet.
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
So this PC is environmentally friendly. IMHO, that's a Good Thing, in fact a Very Good Thing. A higher cause than free technology.
However, I understand that the Crusoe chips use patented technology. How would someone more zealous than I react to this clash between environmental protection and technological freedom.
Would the consensus be simply that being environmentally friendly is a good thing, but that a more open design could be made even more environmentally friendly due to peer review?
#define sig "Every social system runs on the people's belief in it."
Q:Will an average American pay more money to be environmentally sound?
A:Rarely. Sales of SUV's greatly outnumber sales of hybrid vehicles.
This item will experience low sales volume.
Dr. Joseph Hairston
Superintendent, CCBC
You engineer software for Transmeta, but what the hell, we'll just give you credit for creating their processors too!
(Saying thanks Linus is about as absurd as thanking your local mechanic for the sleek body styling on your new BMW.)
.. for work. I do a lot of reading, emailing, and PHP coding. Frankly, this thing'd be easier on the eyes *and* it'd take up a lot less desk space than what I have now. $1,600 seems a little pricey for it, though. I could get a comparable laptop for that, plus I wouldn't need a UPS for it.
This'd be a killer item at half the price.
Why are you thanking Linus? Does he actually have anything to do with designing the processor? I thought he was just helping on the OS side of things from Transmeta. There are probably other Transmeta engineers who deserve more thanks for that hardware, eh?
:)
Not that Linux doesn't deserve help for starting Linux!
Cheers,
Vic
sure. my dual proc setup is full of nasties, but i'll sell it someone after two years who will use it for another five at a quarter of the price of a green pc which will be outdated quicker and wont be able to be expanded.
price will always make or break just how "Enviromentaly friendly" something is. atleast how seriously people will take it
-- botsex is {grep;touch;strip;unzip;head;mount}
They don't even bother to mention the other waste by products that are created from the manufacture of PCB's.
Flux wash cycle comes to mind. Sometimes some really nasty chemicals are used after a PCB or a fully assembled board goes through.
THere's some companies like culligan that provide negatively ionicly charged microbead epoxy balls to clean the flux wash of the flux and any other impurities that come out. What happens to those?
Another item to consider is the ventalation stacks coming from these pcb wash machines, most of the time they are just there for "ventilation" and do not have filtering systems on them.
I know these things because I have worked around the Dixon Landing road exit off of the 880 in Fremont CA in a number of consulting positions to these companies. Whenever you're sitting at the desk of some salesguy trying to fix his "insert windows issue here" they cannot resist telling you in great detail about the process and how wonderfully enviromentally friendly their shop is.
This is how bad it is in USA, I don't even want to think about what my wife saw in Malasia and the phillipines where these things are probably manufactured(shudders)
Instead of spending money on one of these, I prefer spending my spare time collecting old components and making use of them by bringing life back into old i386 and i486 computers. I have a couple of these at home that I just hack around with and constant play around with different OSes (BSD and Linux). Plus I usually learn something.
Um... no lead? When you make a silicon integrated circuit chip the end product contains something like 1/1000th of the raw materials used to make it. The rest of the components, like the drives, may not be quite as bad, but who are they trying to kid?! Eco-friendly my *ss.
It's powered by a bicycle. Hampster models sold seprately.
Marketing anything as "eco-friendly" doesn't make it all that more enticing. That's why most "eco-friendly" items that find any wide use at all are there because it is regulated to be that way.
Is it biodegradable?
... that plastic is not biodegradable, well then the Earth will just create a new paradigm: The Earth + Plastic."
"If it's true
"And like that
A press release with a lot more details than the product page is here.
From the press release:
In addition, the PowerMate eco is also made of NuCycle(TM) plastic - an NEC patented plastic that is 100% recyclable. NuCycle is made of polycarbonate resin mixed with a special, flame-retardant silicone compound. Other computer plastics have flame retardant brominated coatings applied, which do retard flames, but produce harmful gases in the process. NuCycle's flame retardant is non-toxic and built-in, requiring no toxic coating.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
I've been using a Fujitsu laptop now for about 3 months and I've decided that I will probably not buy another machine with a Crusoe chip in it. The function is fine and the clock speeds are reasonable.
The problem is, it "feels" slow. There's just this little bit of latency, particularly as something starts up for the first time, i.e. as the morphing is doing its bit. The more you are exposed to it the more annoying it becomes.
Its little things like this that are what ruin companies. Transmeta needs to do something about this or they will never make it as a mainstream desktop processor.
Frank W. Miller
The harmful chemicals are integral to the manufacture process...Unless technology changes, PCB substrate will always be created out of harmful chemicals.
However, this is a major step in the right direction, to reducing the amount of technological waste in the environmental facilities in addition to conserving power.
...surely will go down in history as the day Ed Begley, Jr. finally got e-mail.
ObSimpsonsParaphrase: "This PC is fully biodegradable, dissolves instantly in water, and is powered completely by my sense of self-satisfaction."
~Philly
I almost bought a powermate with a pentium I 150 mhz back when I was 19 in 96. That was the last I have heard of them.
I forgot all about them and they have seemed to stop selling them in the retail sector. I assumed that vanished.
http://saveie6.com/
The second generation of iMacs were fanless. Running with the G3 chip and convection cooling allowed Apple to ditch the fan and make an (almost) silent computer. The new iMac G4 does have a fan, but it is fairly quiet and energy-efficent in its own right.
jrbd
...but it seems like an appealing choice for Joe Desktop.
...or Barbara Streisand.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
Tired of those self righteous earth freaks and their santimonious love for the "environment?" If you are, buy one of our EcoHostile (TM) PCs.
1) Comes pre-installed with our special Cartmania! Linux distro. Whenever you open an xterm window, it hacks into that network of things they put on spermwhales to track them, and causes the tracking device to emit a lethal shock, killing the damned stupid animal and notifying the japanese of the animal's position so that you can collect your bounty. If you provide it with a list of god damn dirty hippies, it will notify them of each of the oversized fish you kill so that you can call them up and listen to them cry.
2) Uses silicon doped with enriched uranium, which has no desirable semiconductor properties, for no reason.
3) Onboard gasoline powered generator serves as an uninteruptable power supply, and runs constantly, even when machine is off.
4) Using our patented "bassmaster" technology, fan produces constant, 110 decibel throb (roughly as loud as a car horn,) at a frequency of only 175 Hz, to maximally penetrate floors, walls and ceilings. This places you in handy violation of most of those intrusive noise ordinances that red meat eating, tree hating Americans despise so much. For a small extra fee, we can supply you with special "superscreech" hard drives to supply treble.
5) Special catalytic circuitry produces extra ozone - with the fan running at full capacity, and a constant supply of ozone-free air, the mother board alone produces 25 mg of ozone per minute; that's enough to sustainably exceed the OSHA safe limit of 5 ppm in a 5,000 square foot room. Don't worry! At ground level, ozone is a deadly pollutant - it won't rise into the upper atmosphere and can't do anything to screen out the sun's deadly ultraviolet rays.
So, if you're a real american, and if you hate the earth, you should definitely try our EcoHostile PC. Building a more dystopic tomorrow!
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Given that computer monitors need to be upgraded much less often than the actual computer, it makes no sense to build an environmentally friendly PC with a monitor build in. They're trying to pawn off an overpriced disposable monitor as environmentally friendly.
What we really need are for the $200 machines to shrink down to a 1/4 size form factor, lose all the moving parts (especially the fans), and use Crusoe amounts of power. It would be extra-spiffy if there were a better small-component specification such that they could still have components upgrated. On the other hand the only thing I upgrade is the video card for better 3D performance.
> NEC PCs use genuine Microsoft® Windows®
Thanks Linus!
- signed Billy G
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Depends on where you live. In Arizona, specifically southern parts, it is very dusty. Overheating iMacs were heard of. My old apartment, in CT, had dust-bunnies from hell (yes i cleaned), and they always managed to clog up fans and heat sinks too (those with and without fans).
IMO, I would feel better, if I were to buy one, if it had a slow, quiet fan.
in my gas guzzling SUV!
Yes, I am a hypocrite, and I can't spell either!
Now to hit previe
| - | - |
man, your karma going to sink like a rock! ;)
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If this was a laptop, i'd be interested.
If it was also low cost, i'd be super interested.
Wow, theres a novel idea - a light, lowcost, low power laptop.
stuff
I just wish there was more laptop technology used
in desktop components. Modern desktops, even the
simple "just office work" PCs, are too
power-hungry, too hot, too loud. If desktops used
notebook CPUs, a major problem of these computers
would be solved...
Yes, I'd love to buy a Transmeta desktop mainboard
at my local PC reseller. At present, I can only
get a developer board at high prices through
imports. I want a consumer version. Please...
------------------
You may like my a cappella music
Try an Zalman Flower Cooler. The CPU runs a bit hotter, but cool enough to avoid heatdeath, using a single 80mm fan, which can be very quiet.
01101001 01100001 01101101 01101110 01101111 01110100 01100001 01101100 01100001 01110111 01111001 01100101 01110010
Media Access Control, the second layer of Ethernet. 48 Bit adressing system dealing on small scales.
01101001 01100001 01101101 01101110 01101111 01110100 01100001 01101100 01100001 01110111 01111001 01100101 01110010
Isn't this essentially a laptop with an external keyboard? Seems like a "green" laptop would be just as usable, with the added advantage of being portable. And don't try to convince me this thing is cheaper than a laptop; it's got a laptop display which probably accounts for 75% of the price.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
mercury in their backlights
1) LCD's do not need to use fluorescent lamps, they can use LED's. Even with fluorescent lamp it's a step in the right direction.
2) The power savings of using an LCD is significant.
And you can also recycle the Windows Operating System when you do that, because you'll be using Linux.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Just because it's fan-riddled doesn't mean he knows fuck-all about proper PC cooling, and your statements tend to point towards the conclusion that a: you're got such a hardon for your tissue-paper-dispenser-turned-computer that you automatically slag PC's out of habit, and b:your friend needs to read some basics on cooling, lest he have more of his buddies slag off an entire chip manufacturer because he's a fucking knuckledragger.
Hey Taco! Looks like you're using the "infinite monkeys and typewriters" scheme to generate Ask Slashdots again...
So when are we gonna get some Crusoe mobos?
I have a couple labs where I'd love to stick some inexpensive, quiet, low-power systems that have decent speed.
I've talked to at least a dozen people with Crusoe laptops and they really like how long the battery lasts, how cool the system runs, and how surprisingly quick it is.
I want that on the desktop, damnit.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
And most impressive: it's got a solid-metal case that's much more recyclable than any plastic, and costs one-eighth ($200) what the "Green PC" does ($1600).
I personally like curose chips...For mobile devices...For laptops the technology is great(if it ever delivers), since it should significantly extend battery life...
As a desktop, the chip is utterly useless...Typically the cost of the morfing code its 20-30% reduction in apparent speed...So basically a 900 MHz crusoe would actually feel like a 600-700 MHz equivilent pentium processor...But this does buy you the fact that the chip is using significally lower power...Unfortunatly in a desktop, the decreased power usage really doesn't do anything for you and in no way makes up for the very poor performance....
Adding to the sad state of affairs with this desktop is price...For a third of the cost one can have themselves a machine with a processor that performs almost 2 to 2.5 faster just based purely on processor speed(the actuall performance differance is significantly higher due to other considerations such as pipelining and such)...I am not sure any fool would spend $1600 for a desk top that is clearly inferror then an e machine...(Well not counting Mac users..:-) )
Shameless self promotion : The Misadvetures of the in
since when have you been to an office and found it anything but abso-freakin'-lutely freezing?
When the air conditioning breaks, which in my office happens two or three times a year, usually in late July or early August when the temperature is cracking the triple digits and the humidity is measured by hanging a dry towel outside and seeing how long it takes it to start dripping.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
You might also look into Mini-ITX systems. Not only are they fanless, but some of the cases use external power supplies which have no fan. And they're tiny - the motherboard is 17cm square.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
The IBM PS/2 Model E was launched in 1993 as the 'green PC'. It has an LCD display which powers down when the machine isn't in use - amazingly, this was done by having passthrough connectors for keyboard and mouse hanging off the monitor, so it would know when there was user activity. The machine also supports the VESA power saving standard and its 2.5inch hard disk spins down when not in use. The PSU is a teeny 25 watts and there are no fans anywhere.
The single ISA slot is taken up with a PCMCIA adaptor, you can insert two PCMCIA cards in the front and two in the back. In fact the machine is really a laptop in a desktop case, but it makes a very cute (and very quiet) general purpose PC. The 486SLC2 processor won't win any performance awards, but with the onboard XGA-2 graphics hardware it's snappy enough. The machine can happily run Linux or NT, although limited by a maximum 16 megs memory.
And I don't think that IBM's effort was the first attempt at an energy-saving microcomputer, although it might have been the first hyped as 'green'. (The PS/2 E's case has a green stripe round the outside.)
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
$200 is a little misleading. For that price, you get a system with:
It also has no Windows license. Not that one is necessary, but it's included in the $1600 price of the eco-thing.
You're also comparing the power draw of a headless box to that of a box & LCD.
That said, I'd still choose the VIA C3 over the eco-thing. It's cheap (even after you add the above components), configurable, small, and quiet.