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Manufacturing 1 PC Takes 1.8 Tons Of Raw Material
remy writes "Although most of it (1.5 metric tons) is water, a study from the United Nations University details the raw materials used in the manufacture of a PC and 17" CRT. That's an incredible environmental cost per PC, and a very strong argument for trying to leverage older equipment, not to mention upgrading rather than replacing."
that I haven't bought a monitor in seven years and have fished several out of the garbage. Using a KVM switch is helpful too.
I have this odd feeling that they are neglecting how much it would cost to make the second PC and monitor; how much of the material cost is simply overhead?
OK, so I opt to upgrade my computer instead of buying a new one (which is the only thing I've ever done in the last 20 years of PC use).
What parts shouldn't I upgrade in order to be "environmentally friendly"? I'm sure the case doesn't take a hellacious amout of natural resources. I mean, it's just bending metal. The power supply is relatively simple electronics.
So, my guess is that the biggest consumers of resources are going to be the hard drive, the memory, the processor, and the motherboard.
Which are things I upgrade. Regularly.
I think environmental conservation is an important idea, but it seems like "Upgrade! Don't replace!" just gives the manufacturers a good excuse to not explore less environmentally hostile manufacturing techniques.
Having said all that, the beauty of water is that when you use it, you get to use it again. Yay water cycle. Makes planet work good.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
So yeah, recycling really is a good idea.
Please alter my pants as fashion dictates.
Linux can be used as a means to protect our environment, by using its features to save power or paper, since it doesn't require big hardware it may be used with old computers to make their life cycle longer, games may be used in environmental education and software is available to simulate ecological processes. See a detailed description of this means in the Ecology-HOWTO.
Oh good. Because the thing I need right now, is to have things that are more expensive.
Please let me get a job before butt-raping me with artificially inflated "environmental costs". I mean, I'm sure that these upstanding corporate citizens won't build in an extra 2 or 3 or 15% extra profit margins for themselves when they pass those costs on to me.
This is one of those ideas that looks really good on paper, but is astoundingly difficult to administer in any sort of workable fashion. Like communism. Or public education.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
In some states it's illegal to throw a PC or monitor into the garbage. I know in the county I live in there is a fine for dumping computer equipment because of the heavy metals and other hazmats involved, but I've never heard of anyone being arrested or fined or anything for it. There are companies that specialize in proper disposal, but of course it costs you money.
So anyway, even if natural resources don't mean shit to you and you don't want to sound like some save-the-world-with-idealism, tree-hugging liberal, it's a good idea to recycle machines for reasons other than politics. Aside from dumping laws, there is always someone you know that could use an older machine. Or you can donate it to the VOA or Goodwill for a tax credit.
-JemNote the WOL Mini-Howto.
It only works when you have an 'application' (both in terms of network topology, situation, and actual software) that supports the feature. If anyone's actually come across a situation where they could use this, let me know. (You could also go into a lesser power-saving mode and and wake on any(?) interrupt from the network card, but how many OSes support this reliably? You might be able to sleep a *NIX laptop reliably enough, but an inoften-used but 'mission critical' webserver?)
I'd be interested to hear of anyone who's found a best-practice for taking advantage of these features in a real-world environment. Any takers?
How about: "Don't wake on LAN?"
If it's a client machine, surely no network traffic will be interesting if the machine is unattentded. No point in waking for email, not running FTP, DNS etc. If you were running those services, why on Earth would you run power management anyway?
printf("%s@yahoo.co.uk\n", uid[569754].name);
The down side of it is that since it isn't fluoridated , my kids definetely had more cavities (seven among three kids) than my brothers kids (none!! among three), who have fluoridated water, so I have to admit that "city" water does have a few advantages. My bro and my Mom, however, also prefer the way our water tastes (yes!), so every week I drop off a few gallons for them to drink "right out of the ground!"
Oh, yeah, I live in New Jersey, about 30 minutes from NYC, up in the hills. It's tested and it's VERY clean - no PCB's/organics/heavy metals, etc so hold your horses before making the stupid Jersey jokes. Newark airport and the Turnpike is not what Jersey is all about
..........FULL STOP.
Isn't it time we start thinking for ourselves when dealing with environmental claims?
Sometimes environmental claims are exaggerated or simply untrue. Consider that while you're still allowed to own a computer.
I've not bought a PC from them yet, but I like the look of Hoojum. They certainly seem to be the most ethical manufacturer I've come across. Does anyone else know of any companies that do similar things?
how much raw materials is needed to produce "ecological" stuff (both mechanical and food).
Does anyone else have the sneaking suspicion that they're including the entire chain of manufacture and resources used in those numbers? Like, the water used to mine the ores to make the steel, which is made with x ammount of electricity, which is in turn produced by x ammount of fossil fuels, to be bent into the case frame, etc.?
I'm all for reduce, reuse, recycle... but I'd rather that other proponents of it don't mislead in order to promote the three R's. (Not to make accusations, of course....)
I'd also like to see their numbers on LCD screens.
~UP
Eat the Path.
fossil fuels and chemicals.
that's what the bulk of it is, and it's used at different factories around the globe.
and in other news making paper takes chemicals and water as well!!!(not that I care anymore since they just don't dump the chemicals around here back to the lakes anymore - and we have plenty of lakes)
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Can't remember the brand of cigarette, but their ads always featured some long legged model with the tagline "We've come a long way baby"
Using SSH and console is ok, when I just have to pop in really quick to edit some conf file, or tail -f some log. %80 of the time i'm doing this, it's pertaining to some clients web site i'm working on.
Guess what though? Do I fire up lynx to view my changes? Hell no! I use mozilla or IE, or some other html renderer. Do I create graphics or video from the console too? Hell no, I use some graphic program, with some nice gui, and pretty little icons everywhere BECAUSE I LIKE IT!!!!
Not only do I like it for that kind of work, I like it FAST! The faster the better!
Does it look like I care about leveraging old hardware for modern content? (shameless plug)
What I do use old equipment for is an ipcop firewall. I also use it to frankenstien together stepper motor interfaces because it IS old and I don't give a crap if it catches on fire because I wired something the wrong way.
Here's the whole wrapup to my post, i.e. the point. I read slashdot everyday, I build mosix clusters using plumpOS (couldn't remember the link sorry) My garage is filled from top to bottom with old computer crap because I know i'm not average joe sixpack user, and I will find a purpose for it even if it's just for research or fun. Average joe sixpack doesn't care about these things, he just wants his little clickety click icons to open up faster, or his OS to load quicker, or his games to run better.
And I sympathize with him %100. Thanks Joe sixpack for not taking the time to learn what I do, because I'm that car that stops outside your house to load up that PC you put out with your trash.
I work in a LAN gaming center. Most of you have probably seen the type - lost of high end gaming pay-for-play comps loaded with CS, BF:1942, CoD, UT2k3, and a bunch of other acronyms. The power buttons on the cases are really inconvienient to get to (behind one of those door things, 5' off the floor, turned to the side so the case window faces out).
Hitting all those power buttons is NOT FUN. Not difficult, just annoying. So, being the compsci student I am, I wrote a litte C proggie that sends WOL packets out to any machine I want. Incorporate a small databse of the MAC's and a tidy front-end and voila - instant 'power-on' menu. It works well. I'm also going to write a small client-side app that allows me to turn them off remotely, just for fun.
A man who can't pronouce "nuclear arsenal" shouldn't have one -sig ends here.
Consider this: when I need more PC power, I could replace part of the machine (say: motherboard, cpu, memory, disk drive) or I could buy a new system.
When replacing only part, I could say that I saved the environment by not replacing everything. But at the same time, I have discarded part of a system, useless to everyone but a few hobbyists.
When I would have bought a new system, I would have left one complete machine that could be useful to someone else. I could sell it, donate it to a school project, or whatever. It could probably run a few more years before it is useless to anyone.
So, instead of discarding useless parts into the environment, I actually only damaged the economy (because the one who gets my old machine does not need to buy a new one). That does not seem to be such a big deal.
You can also do a lot with a simple memory upgrade.
This is after all the business market. Not the home user market. For office use a dual P3 is even better (with the right modern OS) then a single P4. No more lag while your wordproccessor starts up.
With such an upgrade you just doubled the life of the Mobo, memory, cpu, HD, expansion cards, cables and monitor. 50% reduction in waste. Not bad eh?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Here in Luxembourg, we have non-profit organization to handle recycling (pick-up of recyclable items, such as glass, cardboard, certains kinds of plastic bottles and milk cartons). Their name is Valorlux. A couple of weeks ago, I needed to look up the date of their next pick-up, and was stumped by their flash-only website.
I sent them a mail about it, and got the following reply:
Subject: L'internet n'est pas...
Cher Monsieur Xxxxx,
La page 'macromedia' qui apparait est en fait une passerelle qui vous permet
de telecharger un logiciel
du nom de 'Flash 6' ce dernier etant absolument necessaire pour naviguer
dans le site VALORLUX sans probleme.
VALORLUX a choisi d'offrit ce logiciel et son telechargement entierement
gratuitement afin de permettre a toutes les personnes n'ayant pas ce systeme
de pouvoir visiter notre site.
Ce ne sont absolument pas des publicites pour des societes americaines - ni
autres - simplement des outils
facilitant l'acces au site.
Si vous n'avez pas reussi a le telecharger c'est probablement que votre
ordinateur n'est soit pas assez
puissant, soit un peu trop 'age' pour utiliser ces produits, nous en sommes
absolument desoles.
Nous vous prions de croire en nos salutations les meilleures.
VALORLUX Asbl
Muriel Fedele
Responsable de la Communication
BP 26
L-3205 LEUDELANGE
The last sentence, in English: If you have not succeeded in downloading it [the Flash plugin], it is likely that your computer is either not powerful enough, or a little bit too "old" for using these products, and we are absolutely sorry about this.
Yes, and in order to resolve this issue, I'm supposed to buy a new one, throw the old one into the trash, and waste precious 1.8 tons of raw materials. Way to go, Valorlux!
Say no to software patents.
I don't want to pay these people $35 to buy a copy of their report, nor do I have time to read the whole thing. But I suspect that anyone who does take the time will find faults with the stated conclusions. They aren't necessarily lying -- it's just that the nature of the topic is complex and therefore subject to multiple interpretations.
Due to the interconnected nature of the economy, I don't think that it is meaningful to just say that it takes a certain amount of raw materials to manufacture a computer. For example, does the figure include the water that the cow drank that went into the hamburger that the trucker ate while delivering the VGA connectors? It also takes a ridiculous amount of water to produce a little bit of beef, you know. Perhaps that was a bit far-fetched, but you can see how there could be lots of discretion in deciding what to include or exclude in the tally.
One way to see if their methodology is fair is to compare the environmental impact of producing computers with that of other products. Here I sense that between the UN University and InfoWorld, someone is being sloppy / misleading / sensationalistic.
I think that may be a bit unfair to compare the materials used to produce a PC and a car against their respective final weights. The goal of electronics is to fit as much complexity as possible into ever shrinking products. The goal of car manufacturers is to make their cars as roomy and as lightweight as practical. Why don't they celebrate the fact that a solar-powered calculator can compute what it used to take an ENIAC to compute? In that light, we're already making tremendous environmental progress.
What does it mean to say that water is used? If you take the water and mix it with some nasty chemicals, then it's polluted. If you use it to wash some dirt off of something, it's dirty but easily returnable to the environment. If you use it to carry away heat in a sealed heat exchanger, it remains perfectly clean but might make some fish unhappy when you return it to the river at a slightly higher temperature. If you took it from the Seattle, it's no big deal; if you took it from Ethiopia, it's a crime against humanity. How much of the 1500 kg of water in a PC is "used" in each way?
Anyway, I don't doubt that PC manufacturing has some significant environmental impact, and that we should find ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle. But I'm sure that anyone who wants to write a report with an opposite viewpoint could easily do so. Just be aware that the authors have an interest in picking the comparisons that generate the maximum shock value.
Here they aren't saying anything about the water, but are implying it is 'removed' or 'used up' which is nonsense. It goes somewhere, and probably very near the original 1.3 tons is output as water. What is very important, as mentioned earlier on, is what happens to it, and how effective decontamination is.
Ideally it is still going to it's original destination , valley basin or whatever, just rerouted along the way.
What's the problem with paper? Paper comes from trees. Trees, which can be sold to make money, grow on private land, which costs money. If the owner of the land doesn't replant every tree they cut down, they make less money. This pretty much guarantees that every tree cut down to make paper will be replanted ..... because it costs someone money not to!
Printing on paper almost certainly uses less energy than displaying text on a CRT monitor; and every time you read it, the mean energy-per-reading goes down. When done with, the paper can be burned to liberate heat which can be used in turn to generate electricity. (Since paper is made from plants, the total CO2 content in the atmosphere is unchanged; burying paper in landfill produces methane, which usually is either vented into the atmosphere where it actually does more harm than CO2, or burned without doing anything useful with the energy.) (It could alternatively be pulped to make paper, but since this uses almost no less energy and more toxic chemicals than making paper from fresh wood, this would only be recommended if suitable wood was in short supply.)
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I once worked on a research project that implemented an application that could calculate the economic and environmental impact of creating certain kinds of windows. I was part of the team that created the application. Basically, what you could do was create a network of dependencies, like: this window uses a frame of a certain kind of wood. The size of the frame is such-and-such. To get from a cut tree to this frame, we need to cut up the tree in this way. Cutting the tree cost so much. It takes the guy who does it 10 minutes, and that costs so much. The distance from the tree's origin to the factory is this many miles, and transport costs... etc. This was then weighted against the life expectancy of the window and the expectation for energy conservation.
I conversed a lot with the people that used the application. For years I regularly was hearing discussions about what economical and environmental costs you could attach to the production of a window. For instance, the transport of the trees is done by a lorry. Obviously, you have costs in petrol. But also the lorry needs regular maintenance, so part of the environmental costs of the maintenance goes to the trees that are transported. And also, because it is used, at some point the lorry needs to be replaced. So part of the replacement vehicle goes to the costs of the trees. However, a replacement vehicle must be produced, so part of environmental damage of producing a lorry goes to the trees. But such a lorry is produced by workers who travel to work, so part of the environmental damage caused by their travelling goes to the trees, etc, etc. Continuing such a line of reasoning can make the production of one window frame responsible for the hole in the ozone layer.
If you are wondering: this was not a very successful project.
I'm running my 1999 system until it breaks or I REALLY must get into video editing.
Even though it's an old sub-1GHz proc., it still has tens of GB of free diskspace, can burn CD and still does what I need (I don't game - my wrists are shot from too much keyboard doom and quake).
When I need to upgrade there will be practically nothing worth keeping. I'll need a new mobo for USB2 and Firewire, a new video card... I'll probably want a better sound card... I'll finally join the DVD age (chuck away the CD drive), the floppy drive can go in the trash (OK, the junk pile in the loft). I'd want a quieter case/PSU in a smaller form, so just about the only things to keep are the keyboard&mouse, and my 17" CRT that I'm comfortable with.
When/if this happens, probably a year or two at most, what possible use is my old system, considering I'd transplant the hard drive? It'll be landfill.
Not forgetting the Lowtech: Redundant Technology Initiative in Sheffield UK. Doing a very similar thing with recycled older hardware, making cool tech-art, and donathing machines to charities and disadvantaged people.
Really cool stuff - all brought to you with the help of Open Source Software!
Organic free-range music... yum!
Actually water is quite expensive, in terms of conditioning. But just passing thru the pipe is what this damn report is talking about- I can tell you about processes I've done where the byproducts are BURNED. You want to talk about waste? Thats wasteful. When I tried to implement changes that would recycle and make it easier to recover the fossil fuel solvents, I had it nixed because of the environmental paperwork for the government.
So water consumption is a 'bad' thing? Not in my book.
This sounds like absolute bullshit to me. A quarter-ton of fossil fuels to create one PC? 1.5 tons of water? What do they put in them?
I may be wrong, but I think it's nothing more than the United Nations trying to justify its taxpayer-funded existence.
SpamNet - a spam blocker that really works
You were modded as 'insightful' for repeating the drivel on television?
1L at 1.04 g/cm^3 is a cube 10cm X 10cm X 10cm and weighs in at 1.04 kg. 1500L is a cube approximately 1.15m x 1.15m x 1.15m and weighs 1560kg.
Now you'd like to transport that 1500kg across the world to some poor, impoverished nation and give some thirsty children some water?
How would you like to accompish that? Maybe put it in a truck? Or a boat? Possibly an airplane? You might have to burn some fossil fuels to move it, unless of course you will be willing to pedal and move it by yourself (note, you will need cooling water yourself in order to maintain peak performance and prevent your brain from frying due to overheating).
This new-age drivel is very annoying to listen to. You would have a better chance of relocating the affected individuals to a more 'rich' environment.
Of course, using those computers to predict where hotspots will form is a bad thing- better to be surprised by a hurricane and lose the entire crop across an entire nation, than to 'consume' that 1500L of water. Let's exclude the fact that environmental regulations strictly control what can be returned to the water table, and that fines run into the 100K's for offenses.
Personally, I'd find it prettey interesting to watch you move 1560 kg of water using a bicycle to pull an oxen cart loaded with ~5 55gallon drums of water.
Other facts from the same research:
Just making the metal for the case will use a *lot* of water, for coolant etc. You'd be amazed - in some countries, up to and beyond 100 tons of water can be used to make a ton of steel.
Most of the fossil fuels are probably mostly used in various refining materials process - the case, again, a lot of power needed for that. All the different materials in the PC and monitor adds up amazingly fast - remember that the actual raw materials are really cheap, so you don't see much cost due to this when you buy something in a high-street store.
-Chris
Why not use the remote shutdown tool from the Windows 2000 Resource kit?
Or some other (freeware) version.
Unless of course, you are talking about Win9x machines, or as you suggest, you are re-inventing the wheel just for fun ("fun" definitely being a valid reason to re-invent wheels and other stuff).
Mod that baby up. Dumping energy into a water stream has a massive impact on the surrounding ecology.
I'm sure most of the US people have heard of the manatees- the power plants in Florida have discharge channels that are long and wide and attract hundreds of the 'sea cows' each year. Why? Because the water being returned (reclaimed) comes out quite a bit warmer than the water it's going back into.
This translates to a literal calving ground of protected, tempered water. The plants even run a little tourist center for people to come in and watch the manatees - heh there's even a little hose that drops 'fresh' water into the discharge channel. Watch the creatures pull up under it and drink from a 'novel' non-salt containing water.... I think it gets them drunk, but then again if you've watched a manatee swim you'll swear they are all drunk.
But in this case the energy return is quite benefitial to the surroundings. Usually it's not- think of the Alaskan pipeway that draws heated oil from the wells to distribution. That permafrost underneath NEEDS to be kept cold, yet we are radiating millions of therms of energy above it to keep the oil from freezing solid. So it's a complete tradeoff in that sense- the coldest environment that MUST stay cold has the hottest (And capable of generating the most heat) mere meters above it. I think the pipes are about 2.5m off the ground, to allow animals to pass thru.
The dissolved O2 problem is real, but not as big as you think. I'd place more issue around the extra few degrees in the winter than on the amount of O2 present (algae can have a more devastating effect from phosphate dumping)
Well, it depends on where you live. Where I grew up (St. Louis, Missouri) there were a lot of 100+ year old houses, and a fair number had lead plumbing. Due to the mineral content of the water, there was virtually no lead in the water of these homes because a protective mineral sheath accumulated on the insides of the pipes over the years. Personally, I'd still opt for copper, but there were lots of people who just tested regualarly.
I'm sure plenty of stoned envirotypes will start flailing around their faded tye dies and cracked beads. Sitting on their wicker chairs, they lean forward, with their elbows on their knees and hands leaning out, as if the way to act intelligent was through body language and not speech. They repeat "1.5 tons of water" in a zombie like hysteria.
Now I know that these are interesting animals, after all, the little red ones in the fish tank are interesting too, but, I will close the curtain on their madness for your own good.
Water is extraoridinarly heavy. Water weights
A cubic foot of water weighs about 62 pounds.
1.5 tons of water is about the same amount of water that you use taking a shower or a bath. I'll do my part for more efficient computing, and would skip showering one day per year to make up for my prolifigate use of water. But most environmentalists never shower, so I'll just assume they did it for me!
This is my sig.
- Function takes the target MAC address (in hex - not as a string) as a 6 byte array
- Makes new byte array, 102 bytes in length
- The first six bytes of the new array each need to be FFh
- The rest of the array needs to be filled with the MAC address, 16 times over.
- Send that byte array out as a UDP packet to IP (limited broadcast) address 255.255.255.255 (most WOL apps use port 9, but pretty much any port will do)
Also remember to turn WOL on in both your BIOS settings and in the OS on the target machine.EG: If the target MAC address is 0A:0B:0C:0D:0E:0F, the byte array should be filled with: FFFFFFFFFFFF0A0B0C0D0E0F0A0B0C0D0E0F0A0B0C0D0E0F
0A0B0C0D0E0F0A0B0C0D0E0F0A0B0C0D0E0F0A0B0C0D0E0F
0A0B0C0D0E0F0A0B0C0D0E0F0A0B0C0D0E0F0A0B0C0D0E0F
0A0B0C0D0E0F0A0B0C0D0E0F0A0B0C0D0E0F0A0B0C0D0E0F
0A0B0C0D0E0F
As for releasing the source, I could do that once I get my webserver back up and running (unfourtunately, due to midterms and such, not a very high priority).
A man who can't pronouce "nuclear arsenal" shouldn't have one -sig ends here.
While at one level you're right that earth's ecosystem is a "closed loop" for the most part and there is LOTS of water in the system, I think only about 1% is fresh, while the rest is seawater, which isn't nearly as useful for human purposes. You might also point out that fresh water is not a finite resource like oil or coal- it is being created continuously by evaporation and deposited as precipitation.
However, it takes time for water to completge the cycle. Water that you "use" to water your lawn, take a shower or build a computer doesn't go straight back into the reserves of usable water- it either evaporates or is polluted.
In many parts of the country and world, we are starting to run out of fresh water because it is being pulled out of wells, lakes and rivers faster than it is being replenished by nature. The result is that the water levels in the huge underground aquifers that are the primary repository of fresh water are starting to drop, with potentially dire ecological consequences. Sure, it will come back if we stop using it, but that doesn't seem to happen.
So basically, yes, it matters a lot how much water is "used" in the making of a computer.
The thing about "using" water is that... well, after you use it, it's still water. You can dump chemicals into, you can shit in it, it's still water. So it's hard to say that it's "consumed." Really it's just dirtied, and can be cleaned and turned back into clean water somehwat more easily than, say, replacing oil that was burned.
1500 kg of that is water. It's not used up--it's supposed to be treated and then sent down the drain. It gets recycled fairly quickly. My monitor doesn't contain a ton and a half of water--does yours? So where did that water go? We each use about 200 kg of water per day just in our homes--washing laundry, flushing toilets, showering. 1500 kg seems like a lot, but we each use that much every week.
240 kg of fossil fuels. Well, that's a possibility. How is that assessed? That's (ballpark) a hundred gallons of gasoline. That's what someone living 25 miles from work might use in two months of commuting. It's not enough fuel to get your motorhome to the Grand Canyon and back for your vacation this summer. The figure also assumes that all the energy used to produce the computer comes from fossil fuels. If nuclear energy was used, that 240 kg of fuel corresponds to roughly 2 cubic centimetres (half a teaspoon) of unenriched uranium. If hydroelectricity was used, the cost would be kinetic energy from many tons of moving water. (See note above regarding the recycling of water.)
22 kg of 'chemicals'. Well, that's certainly vague. Water is a chemical. Some of those chemicals are acutely nasty. Some are moderately unpleasant. Some will be relatively harmless. Does that 22 kg include the finished product? I mean, the computer itself with CRT is probably up around ten or fifteen kilograms...
Other posters have already noted that a useful report would compare these totals to the resources used in the production of other products: home appliances, automobiles, cotton. (The Aral Sea is drying up largely because of cotton growing in the area. It takes about 5000 kg of water to grow one kilogram of cotton. The environmental costs of the pesticides and bleaches used in cotton production I will leave for another post.)
~Idarubicin
A CRT is hardWARE, btw. A monitor often has a lot more wear in it than most people get from them.
How to make a monitor last longer:
1) Keep the brightness down at the level that black is black, not gray.
2) Adjust the contrast well below the point that you note the white dots from blooming [expanding].
The net of this is you are stressing the circuitry less [IE the image will maybe somewhat dimmer than you are used to]. The natural process of phosphor darkening that occurs over time progresses more slowly at lower brightness levels.
I have been using the same 17" monitor since 1997, and the image still looks near perfect. I have a cheap Samtron 14" that I used for 5 years continuously [purchased in 1992, and now used occasionally] that still has a sharp and bright image.
The only reason I have bought new monitors is for analog capabilities or for the larger display area.
Lastly, the monitors I use at work [1994, 1996 Mfg dates] and still have very good images.
Actually, I would recommend people upgrade from CRT to the best LCD they can afford.
:)
In a single year, my LCD uses at least 100kWh less than a CRT. 1kWh ~= 2lbs/1KG of coal, so the CO2 emissions in manufacture are offset by a ~ 3 year life span.
But that's not all. In the summer in most office buildings, you have to add the air conditionning costs- those CRT hogs create a lot of waste heat, so you have to waste even more energy to remove that heat. You can also have a smaller batter and/or UPS.
While the energy costs alone won't justify the cost of replacing your CRTs, the increase in productivity certainly will. Better contrast has meant fewer headaches for me, and I can read much faster off my LCD (granted, 1600*1200) than I can on most flickering CRTs.
Even a 1% increase in productivity -assuming it's not all wasted on slashdot- is worth quite a bit more money than the LCD for any professional.
So, a cheap productivity boost with a small or positive environmental footprint... In my ideal world, the old machines would be recycled with an efficient OS and an LCD screen
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
how much fuel and water does it take to manufacture 1kw worth of solar electric panels?
General purpose PC's allow people to have one computer to do computer things. This allows developers to create new ideas - for existing hardware! It's a really neat trick, and pretty much the only reason that software development has taken off like it has. It's kinda like the concept of making general purpose things like, say, screws, gears, wheels, etc. Ya know, that industrial revolution thing. You got a circuit specifically built for posting on SlashDot?
Technology moves forward when people push the envelope and want more. Games use a wide range of diverse technologies, and are constantly at the edge because that's what seems to entertain the purchasers of the games the most. It's the "Ooooh! Aaaaah!" factor - keeping it means outdoing the last each time. That drive to do more and outdo what's been done is what makes science and technology change. It's the reason we're not still sharpening sticks. I'm kinda glad we've got that drive.AGP being on every motherboard probably has something to do with AGP becoming what's called a standard. Standards are kinda cool - they let multiple companies make things that work together. You seem to be arguing that there should be no internet - but rather only a copper wire stretched between any two points of communication, where the protocol is unique to each. Otherwise, ya know, it's general purpose and not all the bandwidth is always used.
Where are you getting that 80% statistic? Do you mean "When a person isn't running anything, the processor isn't getting used"? Duh. If I never used but 20% of my processor, why do some operations take measureable time? Maybe because I'm *using* the full processor... hmmm... that means - if I have a faster processor, I wait less time for results.
I remember when generating an RSA key took several minutes, and compiling a moderately large piece of software could take a day or two. I'm pretty happy to have technology that makes both doable within the time it takes to grab a cup of coffee. Sure, I'd love for them to be instantaneous, but that'd take using something like 1000% of my 2.1GHz processor. It's almost doable with distributed or grid computing with enough back end resources, but then running most of that grid software requires a general purpose PC, 'cause it's kinda new technology...
I'll agree with that to some degree - but it's because there are so many factors that contribute to what a 'requirement' is and there's a finite time to test before shipping a product. Say you have a program with an embedded web browser.... How much RAM does it need? Well, maybe 10MB... Wait - what if the browser goes to a page with a 5MB bitmap on it? And at the same time, a Java VM starts up? What if the user can open multiple windows - as many as she wants until memory runs out? Most companies set requirements based on the minimum levels that feel 'responsive' under slightly averse conditions across a finite set of hardware. It isn't going to be a hard number, because different people use software different ways, and there are a *lot* of hardware configurations out there.
1GB = 512MB * 2. Twice as much means you can run twice as many programs or use software that requires twice as much memory. I've used quite a bit more than 1GB of RAM before, and it's a lot faster reading from RAM than swapping to disk and back, test it out sometime :) Even if you're blind, you can still hear the hard drive chugging....
Maybe not, but I sure hope it's a troll that just got poorly moderated.
Who marked this one up to a 5? It's almost as bad as the bloody article....
I write code.
The problem with your argument is that these so-called experts have no idea about what they're talking about. Let me explain:
"And how do you recycle that water?", you ask? Generally, some of the ways of doing it are...
1) Evaporation & Condensation
2) Filtering
3) Biological catalysis (popular with sewage)
And I completely disagree that there's a fresh water shortage. Rainfall in the US has not decreased in the past decade and I know of no environmentalist who has even claimed that global warming would decrease rainfall (it might actually increase it!). Rainfall gives you fresh water (yes, Captain Obvious has spoken!).
Now, as for Israel & the West Bank, they don't get a whole lot of rainfall..mostly because it's a DESERT.
And my profession has spent decades studying the best way to purify water. Those pharmaceutical and manufacturing plants commonly purify their water outflows so much they are often MORE pure than the water inflow.
And, yes, it does require energy to perform, but it doesn't have to be from burning fossil fuels. They usually use electricity so a significant fraction of it comes from nuclear reactors.
Now, go rant on nuclear reactors for all the good it'll do ya, rofl.
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