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Green Tea Cleans Hard Drive Heads
mprindle writes "Wired.com has an article announcing that a 'study of the use of green tea extracts for polishing the magnetic heads in hard-disk drives has yielded a compound that works three to four times faster than conventional compounds. If the findings can be reproduced in an industrial setting, the compound could reduce the cost and environmental impact of hard-drive manufacturing.' And you just thought that green tea was good to drink."
I always knew green tea was meant for something other than drinking.
It's nasty stuff.
Silly rabbit
antioxidant
This could only prompt me to ask them: One Lump or Two? [WHACK WHACK]
And you just thought that green tea was good to drink.
No, not really.
And here I thought green tea was only to clean your...uh... "internal soft drives"...
Considering that bio-active materials like green tea (yum!) decay and eventually become unusable and must be disposed of properly, doesn't it make more sense to stick with chemicals which, though bad for the environment, do not decay or degrade and can be used in a specific task indefinitely?
Add to this the fact that landfills are full of "biodegradable" waste which because of the lack of oxygen in the area are unable to break down. It makes far more sense to go with a material which can be reused and/or recycled. Bio-degradable sometimes ain't.
I have been pwned because my
If green tea is all that good, just imagine when they try beer!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_tea
What does this have to do with the price of tea in China?!
Oh... umm... Nevermind.
Aren't these stories supposed to be for *April* 1st? :)
There appears to be an innovation that may make HD production more efficient. So far so good. How is this made more relevant by the fact that it involves a chemical compount also found in green tea?
Yeah, hemp, it's good for "heads."
computer repair people drink tea.
Next thing you know, they'll be telling us green tea is good for your HEALTH, too.
mouth-clean
throat- clean
digestive tract - clean
nasal cavity - clean if not swallowed properly.
teeth - green.
they have bee cleaning hard drives in china with green tea for a thousand years...
I think this is a joke, some kind of May Fools day.
Thats right... All the tea!
(family guy, for the ones without humor)
So, perhaps if production is cheaper (I bet tea is cheaper than chemical compunds), then maybe HDD prices will drop a bit? Or maybe margins will increase for PC part sales. Bah.
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When I visited the U.S.S.R. in 1988 our assigned 'tour propagandist' in Samarkand, Uzbekistan informed us that the green tea was drunk in part to prevent strontium-90 poisoning. gg Communist science bureau!
I hate Grammar Nazi's
This process is gentler to the components that make green tea such a wonderful beverage. Earl Grey, Ceylon, Bo Lei, and whatever other brown or black tea have been pan-fried or dry-heated to stop the natural oxidation process.
Steaming preserves the EGCG , which is being studied for it's anti-bacterial and cancer fighting properties, and also L-Theanine , which gives real green tea it's flavour and purportedly induces Alpha waves and tranquility in the brain.
Ounce per ounce, Steamed green tea contains more polyphenols than red wine or grape seed extract.
I have an anxiety problem, and had to swear off coffee a few years ago. No caffeine in any form for me, until I stumbled upon japanese green tea. All tea contains caffeine , but it is about 1/2 the amount in the same serving of coffee. The added benefit of the L-Theanine practically cancels out the effect of caffeine on the body and in the brain.
I start the day with a cup of thin matcha (do two of these and can you say "420"?) , then a cup of Gyokuro and in the evening some nice genmai cha.
Unfortuneatly, green tea is only harvested 4 times per year in Japan. Green tea is very perishiable, and is best when fresh. The bags you can purchase in asian groceries here in the U.S. of A. have been sitting on shelves too long and taste like crap. (Bonus note: all the decaffeinated 'green' teas you can purchase in regular supermarkets will not taste like the real thing, pretty bitter and bland. There is no decaffeinating process that doesn't kill all the good things about green tea. Fresh green tea is naturally sweet and not bitter when prepared correctly.)
Interested? I purchase all my teas from here.
Wait, What?
That could really help with hard drives.
Does regular or decaffeinated matter?
On a humorous note, will caffeinated green tea make the hard drive faster?
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
But wouldn't the teeine prevent the hd from going into sleep mode?
but I've found that I can actually get better results by soaking my hard drive overnight in coca-cola.
"And you just thought that green tea was good to drink."
;-)
Actually I always thought it tastes like dishwater. Good to see it might at least be of some use.
Some here are jumping to the conclusion that this will pollute less.
Until somebody spends another $1 million of our taxes (read: NSF grant) in doing the net impact calculation, consider this:
1. More land dedicated to grow green tea = less uncultivated land, less *nature*, as they say
2. Fertilizer & pesticide for green tea, and all of the petrochemicals that went into it
3. Fuels and other energies used to sow, harvest, clean, store & transport green tea
4. Chemical processes to refine bioactive compounds out of the tea itself
And I have not even mentioned the fuels used to create the wealth that is going to get taxed in order to pay for the agricultural subsidies that (of course!) are eventually going to be given to growers of green tea.
The next pasture is always greener
sounds like one of those stupid John C. Dvorak articles that are supposed to be funny bet aren't.
[FromTheMorning]
I should have RTFA first.
Now they'll come out with a whole line of holistic tech support.
"Coming Soon -- a new Ginko Biloba extract to double your RAM!"
Reminds me this story that my dad told me, who's worked on big systems back in the 50's and 60's working as an aerospace employee, back when they were still using magnetic cores. They had been having major problems with the core overheating. Somehow, and don't ask me how, they figured out that Wildroot Cream Oil was the perfect coolant, and the core worked like a charm from then on.
Guess they figured it out in much the same way they figured out green tea cleans heads really well!
-R
And the tannic acid also has the wonderful ability of leaching the calcium from your bones, and impairing the body's iron absorption. After living in Japan for 3+ years, where they drink green tea like we drink soda pop, I saw thousands of grandmas that had osteoporosis so bad that their upper spine could't go above parallel with the ground.
So for green tea, we know that it:
1) Contains chemicals that are effective in cleaning hard drives,
2) Contains tannic acid, which can cause calcium and iron deficiencies, AND is used in softening animal hides,
3) Contains caffiene, which has many health side-effects, even more numerous than tannic acid.
I don't see why anyone would want to drink this stuff!
In his interview at Salon a couple weeks ago, Neal Stephenson wrote, "Every culture can be kind of defined by what they drink in order to avoid dying of diarrhea. In China it's tea. In Africa it's milk or animal blood. In Europe it was wine and beer."
I didn't realize the same would apply to hard drive cleaning...
This sig intentionally left justified.
Forty Green Tea bags from local Dollar Store, $1.
Five or six large capacity hard drives, $1,000.
Recieving a $100,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to fund the project, priceless...
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
I also droped my Palm in a coffee... but it still works. Thanks Ford my coffee was not too hot...
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance." Isaac Asimov
"I should have RTFA first."
I won't have that kind of talk in here, young mister!
In Chinese restaurants, waiters pour a bit of the leftover tea onto the table to clean it. They say it works much better than plain water. Ho gon-jeng! (very clean)