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Build an Environmentally-Friendly PC
ThinSkin writes "While gas-guzzling cars are greatly to blame for releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, computers play their role in warming up the Earth too. ExtremeTech has an informative how-to article on building a green PC that will not only help save the planet, but will also slim down that energy bill. An important component, or culprit, to consider is the power supply, so investing in an 80 PLUS PSU is a step in the right direction. The article also discusses how to configure Windows Vista to utilize its power-saving options."
low end amd x2 and geforce 6150 video as well as using xp.
Don't build a PC, re-use old hardware and keep it out of landfills.
Efficiency in new PCs has it's place, but it is nothing compared to the benefits of re-using old hardware which can be perfectly good for most tasks as long as you arent in love with Microsoft Bloat, ExXxtreme edition.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Many reports now indicate that Vista will load even a Core 2 Duo cpu at 20-30% just to run the interface. When you compare this to my normal 0-1% for WinXP or KDE, you'll see that you won't be saving any power at all with Vista unless you turn off the default interface. (Add to this also the extra load on your GPU from running Aero...)
So you're suggesting we continue to produce global warming gases so that we can put saddles on pterodactyls?
What is that? A PC that's friendly to the environmental? Is this something out of "Chronicles of Riddick"?
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
We recently had a "build the most efficient desktop PC you can" contest of sorts at work using a outlet-based usage meter. The winner was a guy who wasn't even competing using his off-the-shelf laptop. It was a bit of an eye-opener for the rest of us pseudo-greenies, but it makes sense: laptop makers are always trying to cut corners on power usage.
All it does is slow the death of the planet. . . . a little. . . very little.
Self proclaimed wannabe geek. You know how it is. Most of us who read this stuff probably fit in that category.
Its a troll!
If you want to be green, how about *not* buying a shiny new energy-guzzling behemoth of machine in order to satisfy Vista's minimum requirements and running Linux on it instead :-P I have looked into the energy-efficient UPSs though
1. The monitor uses a lot of energy, so a laptop is better as it uses a flatscreen panel - or a PC with a flat LCD panel.
2. The power supply on most PCs is designed for a full draw, so it is far better to get a laptop which has a power supply for a smaller draw than a giant 300W PC power supply.
3. Memory is cheaper than CPU, so it is far more efficient to buy a PC with a decent AMD chip that has low power consumption and then cram it full of as much RAM as it can address, than it is to buy an Intel quad core chip you don't really use with minimal RAM. And remember your graphics card has it's own power draw. Basically, RAM is usually 1000 times faster than a hard drive, and can be used for swap files, and to speed processes, so cram it more full of RAM if you want to extend the life of your system and avoid power-intensive disk access. Consider a flash USB drive as well - very low consumption. And use rechargeable batteries for your optical cordless mouse and other devices - ignore the warnings, they work fine.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Its not really a threat, well not until the Great Shaitan catches you outside your sietch and devours you in his fiery maw. Then it's a bit of an issue.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Why spend all the effort on an energy-efficient desktop when many companies have already invested tremendous money to maximize battery life? These days, expandability problems of laptops have been largely solved with Firewire 800 and whatever is the current replacement for PCMCIA. Its more productive to spend your time installing double-pane windows, sealing off drafts in your house with insulation tape or shopping for a fuel-efficient car.
You are a fool if you believe that events that occured over BILLIONS of years is of no consequence to you if they take place in 50.
So to answer your question: Yes. It is that much of a threat.
If the US poured even just 5% of the money it poured into it's war on terrorism, we'd all be much better off.
Then again, why not just spend MORE on the military so you can shoot those dinosaurs in your yard, hmmm?
This article makes an inefficient computer when there are plenty of available components that use considerably less power. My favorites include the Via http://www.via.com.tw/ line of processors and motherboards and the PICO PSU from http://www.mini-box.com/ claims >90% efficiency for all of its models. Using these components you can make a system that uses about 30Watts instead of the 168Watts in the article. Thats a five fold difference!
Mart!n Smith-Martinez http://www.msmithma.name
When they get rid of the hard disk, there will be even less consumption.
Deleted
You are attempting to power down Vista.
Cancel or Allow?
Allow
I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that
Any more cliches we can apply here?
I, for one, welcome our power-saving-bleeding-heart-liberal overlords.
In Korea, only old people conserve power.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these low-power-draw PCs! (kinda defeats the purpose, huh?)
1. Design low-power PC.
2. Turn on power-saving options in Vista
3. ???
4. Profit! (actually, there is no 3. lowering power consumption is the profit-making step)
The best way to reduce power consumption in Vista is to allow chairs to be thrown at your PC until it stops working.
Disclaimer: I once worked for a PC manufacturer
The demand of the free market will cause PC manufacturers to make low-power PCs. Any regulations mandating low power consumption are doomed to fail and will inversely lead to market inequalities resulting in increased power consumption and fewer low-power alternatives for individuals who want to be free like their information. This is why I created my philospophy of lawlessoprofiteeringism.
Sorry, 5 PM on Friday, couldn't resist.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Honestly, we've got to stop putting so much carbon dioxide into the Martian atmosphere. It's heating up that planet something awful. The Martian once frozen poles are melting! Two rovers is obviously two too much.
Oh yeah, and while we're at it we must figure out who is using their time displacement technology in the future to pump undetectable carbon dioxide into cyclical periods of Earth's past, including the Middle Ages, making it appear as if the Earth can vary wildly in temperature without human intervention. Obviously the planet cannot warm or cool due to solar activity, or cosmic rays creating clouds. Global warming must be related to human activity, so time travel has to be the vector.
It's the only reasonable explanation.
that if you do everything that you can to be more environmentally friendly, it helps. In fact, every little bit helps. This is a math problem that finds its value in large numbers. If each of us saves 12 watts per hour of use, that could make a huge difference. 12 x 600 million computers (home and business) is somewhere in the area of 7.2 Billion watt hours, or 7.2 million kilowatt hours. Not sure about you, but that is a lot of saved CO2 emissions. Do the same with your old fridge, say you save 75 watt hours per day, multiplied by say 350 million units. You end up with more HUGE savings. Try this on lights, appliances, hot water heaters, A/C units and it really does add up, so supporting power saving devices is worth the effort.
By effectively ignoring this opportunity simply because its not a huge savings for each individual, we miss an opportunity to save hugely in both environmental costs, and overall operations costs for those companies supplying our electricity.
Eventually, both will translate into a better world, in some small way or other, and both should stave off utility bill cost increases, if not stop the growth of electricity usage.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Get a good PSU anyhow. They are great. The less power usage = less heat, slower fan, less noise. Also, the better ones tend to have better regulation and put out more stable power. The one I really like is the Corsair HX series (they have a 520 and 620 watt supply). Amazingly quiet PSU, even in my fairly heavily loaded system.
So it's really a win-win kind of thing. Even taking any sort of environmental concerns aside, a good PSU a a good buy.
No, he's suggesting we continue to listen to debunked hogwash paid for by the fossil fuel industry.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I'm running Vista on a P4 3Ghz system right now total load from Windows components is about 1% from the DWM (the desktop composition engine). Firefox is using as much or more CPU time just dealing with the animated ad and the input of my text.
So maybe Vista will eat up 20% of a Core 2 if you screw something up, but it eats almost no CPU normally when properly configured.
Agreed. But then you'll have someone drop theirs into a dock, with a big ol' monitor, optical mouse, speakers, and whatever other peripherals are connected and you're probably no better off at that point.
Setting aside issues such as thermal cycling for a moment. If a PC and OS architecture could be developed that would boot almost instantly, the problem of computers left sitting on "because it takes too long to boot up" could be drastically reduced.
That's where most of the waste is occurring...when they're not in use.
Does anyone know whether there are any hack to turn DSL routers into basic web servers? My ideal solution, would be:
- main computer powered down
- DSL router serves basic web site
- If requests are made on ssh port or 'extend web site', then Wake on LAN is sent to main PC
- PC goes to sleep after a certain amount of idle time or explicit command
Of course this is probably only useful for home PCs, but this would allow the main computer to only be on when it is needed.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
...or....troll.... he's suggesting that the hippy-liberal-hypocritical types (see: al gore) might just be tooting a horn that would be better left alone, at least until it's better understood!
You get a better, quicker bang for the buck reducing methane. It's a bigger culprit in warming, and cycles out of the environment in less than a decade.
So, I guess you need to build a vegetarian computer.
The power plug on my desktop computer is plugged into to a Kill-A-Watt Watt meter which shows that I am using 94 Watts at the moment. My large 19 inch monitor uses a different power cord and is using additional power not included in that figure. I have an older socket 939 version of the AMD-64 3800+ which, when running a 64-bit version of Linux, throttles the CPU back to 1 GHz during light usage to save power. Under heavy usage it goes up to its full 2.4 GHz speed and uses significantly more power then. I don't have Windows XP on this computer, but my guess would be that it would probably do the same thing. It has not sure how the AMD-64's energy efficiency compares to Intel or other AMD processors. I am not a gamer and am using an ordinary video card that probably isn't very power hungry and doesn't even have a fan. The computer's power supply is the 83% efficient Antec Phantom 350 power supply, which is an energy efficient fanless 350 Watt model that Antec used to make. I also have 2 very large hard drives and 1 GB of RAM.
I haven't yet had a chance to read the article, but decided to post my power usage for comparison. A laptop would probably use even less power.
Um I wouldnt call those advantages. We arent from the Cretaceous period and we aren't really used to that high of a CO2 level. Ever been in a room with 10% CO2 levels? You know if you had cause you'd have a huge headache. You arent a dinosaur and you arent indestructible. Why would you want to change the world to something you may not adapt to? Why not try to keep the world as we know and love. You know they didn't have air quality warnings and smog alerts when I was a kid. Now you can barely breathe the air in major cities on a hot day due to pollution. Excess CO2 is in that pollution. Now when you can barely breathe the air Id like you to state how that is advantageous to anyone.
What reports? I'm running Vista Business with full Aero (on 2 screens, 20" and 17") and loads of silly gadgets, about 10-15 different apps open including two copies of Visual Studio, a local Xming server, firefox, thunderbird, MSN, Acrobat reader, anti-virus etc. etc.
My CPU usage is idling at 2-6% looking at the little CPU gadget (which is probably using some of that itself..) And RAM usage is at 65%, and I've never ever seen it higher than 80ish. The general experience is easily faster than any version of XP that I've used, and I'm afraid to say significantly faster than any linux experience that I've had (and I've used Debian and then Ubuntu as my primary OS prior to getting this copy of Vista for 2-3 years).
And this is on a 3 year old Athlon64 3000+ with 1gb RAM and an old ATI 9800 graphics card. I seriously call on all the twits who are constantly moaning on about Vista's performance to actually use the damn thing, or shut up.
This guy wants to build a "green PC", and he uses a wireless keyboard with batteries? I give him the benefit of the doubt: maybe he was not around yet when all the eco hippies were running their holy crusade against batteries. But anyway the problem should be obvious: getting two new batteries every few month probably offsets all the savings of a few kilowatt hours. Especially if they are just thrown in the bin.
Summary: too much hot are to be green.
Calling the former Vice President of the United States of America a "hippy-liberal-hypocritical type" isn't trolling at all, now is it?
The conservative/big oil side of the debate has no viable position left to argue, so they resort to infantile name calling, as usual.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The Linksys NSLU2 is a nice little device, it's a little ARM based linux box that you're supposed to plug USB disks into and use as a NAS. But of course you can run linux on it (even normal Debain), and hence you could get the setup that you're looking for going I imagine. And super low power usage. Only £55 as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSLU2 http://www.nslu2-linux.org/
I would have said the same thing about our planet's carbon cycle. We're running a huge experiment; the results should be quite interesting.
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
Low power? Green machine?
Try an abacus, the most environmentally friendly calculation device (and avoid the ones that use lead-based paint).
Or did you mean an environmental friendly computer?
In this room sit two very different computers:
I still love using that Thinkpad, because it hardly even needs a fan, whereas the desktop is practically heating the room.
Just thinking about it makes me want to sell my desktop on ebay and use the money to stock up on old Thinkpads to save for the future.
My computer is run by a bicycle power generator!
Mine runs by burning baby seals alive. Sure, it costs a bit more, but it's worth it to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
That's nothing. I got Gilligan riding my bicycle power generator.
You have raised several issues.
Well, that won't be much of a problem. If we have hit or are very near peak oil, then no matter how much we burn we will never come close to the levels in the Cretaceous.
If you read my original linked interview, the Professor discusses high O2 and CO2 levels.
This problem should be/have been solved by the Clean Air Act. We are now no longer able to enforce this law due to NAFTA, which is a separate issue.
Regardless of the sudden change we may be experiencing in CO2 levels (which may not be all that sudden compared to large volcanic erruptions that the biosphere has previously absorbed), I don't think that humanity has as much power over the environment as it hopes or fears.
OMG the Clean Air Act? That's the biggest joke Ive ever heard. Neither of the big parties in Canada are serious about this. Its either a) a way to get votes or b) act concerned then wait till the voters forget about it. I dont buy Harper's recent conversion to green living as much as I buy anything that a politician/oil company slave might say. Jeez its buying their policies that causes us to forget about pushing them to tackle problems with real responses. Im sick of the spin and three word buzzwords that are so fashionable these days. There is no way that anyone can claim that the air quality in Central Canada is being fixed by any government policies. I left there 5 years ago because I wasnt a fan of breathing that crap. The Clean Air Act will be about as effective as the Accountability Act is now. Hold it up in committees while the teeth are removed. Then the public thinks they got what they wanted and dont realize how ineffective the new laws are. When will people stop taking politicians at face value and put them to the test. Jeez if we dont do it soon with this government we may lose the ability to do so in the long run. Clean Air Act my @ss
Several times he said something like, "It's lead free and RoHS so you can throw it away guilt-free!" That's just not true!
RoHS does not equal guilt-free trashing. It attempts to equal a full cycle approach.
RoHS stuff is low lead, true, BUT it is marked with a little trashcan that has a line through it. That icon is telling you DO NOT THROW THIS IN THE TRASH. Have it properly disposed of or return it to the manufacturer. While it contains no lead, it may contain OTHER hazardous materials (eat some no-lead resistors and a slice of PCB, tell me how that makes you feel). It needs to be reclaimed, and NOT end up in a landfill. That's what RoHS is ALSO about.
I'm not a super greenie (I *am* wearing a green shirt) but even I know that trash is a part of the green picture. He had a shred of info about low power and efficient power supplies, but green does not equal guilt-free trashing. Ever.
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
When our Sun finally expands to be a bloated red giant or a meteor slams into the Earth turns the crust into a sea or molten rock.... Until then I am all for Al Gores $4,000 per month Gas and Electric utility bills. He has worked so hard making sure us uneducated, unwashed masses fear the future. Algoore needs the chance to sit back, relax and vent off some CO2.
Why do you think there is a choice? The Earth is a dynamic system with many inputs other than human produced CO2. Sunlight, orbitial dynamics, solar wind and 10 more things that we're not sure how they affect the planet yet.
The first thing to be aware of is that there is change and will always be change. You might not like it - humans generally don't - but you cannot stop it and for the most part cannot control it.
The second thing to be aware of is that there are cyclic changes that have occurred in the past that we do not know very much about. There isn't much documentation from the last warming period and the transition into what is called The Little Ice Age. And that was less than 1,000 years ago. We are dealing with cycles that are perhaps 100,000 years in duration or longer. The people that claim to have special knowledge of where things are going and how they are going be for the next 100, 200 or 10,000 years are deluded fools. We don't know - but we do know they will not be the same as the last 500 years which has been the best, most human-suited climate in a very long time. Perhaps more than 50,000 years.
Change is real, and having all of humanity in one basket means that there are no choices - adapt or die. The real choice is do we (as a species) keep all our "eggs" in one basket and hope a solar flare doesn't wipe out 50% of the planet anytime soon. This is a species-survival question and right now it seems we want to answer it with politicians out vote-getting rather than thinking. And people that don't want to "rock the boat" because they assume we can somehow stop cyclic changes of the planet. And that if we play nice with the Sun there won't be a massive flare in our lifetimes.
As a matter of fact, I might call you a master. Of debating.
Well, aren't you a cunning linguist!
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
I am a master debater. And a cunning linguist. But I don't rely on proofs by assertion when arguing anthropogenic global climate change. Only when calling out a troll who disrespects others in lieu of actual debate.
Out of curiosity, do you think the global climate is changing? Do you think we are having an impact? Impact or no, do you think we should do anything about it?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
OS choice is important too and this has harmed power savings for everyone.
Laptops have to keep up with crazy stuff from M$ that now requires a 350 watt video card for it's interface. Laptop power consumption has dramatically increased over the last ten years, which is why they can burn your lap. My five year old laptop needs twice the power supply my ten year old laptop did. The proportional increase is just like desktops.
Laptop power usage is still much less than desktops and the increased power consumption is offset by power management that has worked, at least under GNU/Linux. The best way to save power is to have sleep and hibernation working when you don't really need the computer. On desktops, that has not always worked because M$ never pushed it or could even use it due to various OS and application problems. Vista finally has power management and desktops may finally work right.
The best solution, of course, is to combine the best efficiencies in one place. I'm easily able to get along with older thinkpads because GNU/Linux is efficient. You can get the same kinds of components for desktop systems and they will save power as long as sleep and hibernation work, but Vista won't run on them. A bonus is that your system is quit and cool.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Never, ever boot it.
Of course. It isn't all bad, and it isn't the end of the Earth (because the Earth has previously had much higher CO2 concentrations, and life survived just fine, if not flourished, especially in the Mesozoic "greenhouse" phase).
On the other hand, human agricultural systems, economic systems, and historical civilizations aren't exactly robust when it comes to significant climatic change. Human systems are clearly more fragile than life is, and the rate of change also matters alot (there haven't been many times in Earth history when change in atmospheric CO2 of this magnitude has been this rapid).
So, even if it isn't all bad, it's still playing with fire.
"no viable position left to argue,"
That's an argument by assertion. You don't support your point, you just take it as read that the other side is wrong and you're right.
You might have published treatises of supporting information, but until you provide them to me, they don't really count (from my perspective).
"do you think the global climate is changing?"
I'd tend to think that change is a key feature of climates.
"Do you think we are having an impact?"
An impact? Everything has an impact. Are humans having a significant, reversible, detrimental impact on climate change? Not sure, I tend to think not.
"Impact or no, do you think we should do anything about it?"
I don't think we should do ANYTHING. I think we should take reasonable measures to minimize our environmental impact, individually and collectively. I think it's a good idea to be good stewards of our environment, minimize pollution and harmful emissions, and generally try to keep as clean a house as is practical without, say, telling everybody that they don't get to drive cars or fly on airplanes anymore.
Do I think that Hurricane Katrina was caused by the popularity of SUVs? No. Not at all.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
The article talks largely about the power consumption of a computer, but simply making the silicon chips is a major undertaking as well. In the small research facility I work in, we have:
* Several thousand square feet of cleanroom, stabilized at 40% humidity and controlled at 20 C, with the full air volume being changed every two minutes. The air conditioners run all day, every day.
* Deionized water cascade system, which run at 4 litres per minute (think flushing your toilet every minute). The DI loop uses several litres of city water to make one litre of DI water.
* Oxidation furnaces, which typically run at 1000 C
* Photoresists and solvents of all kinds, ranging from the generic acetone (nail polish remover) to the really nasty stuff. I just replaced 20 L of solvents today to replace what we used over the last week. We trap the used stuff, but it all has to be disposed of safely later (incineration in some cases).
* A variety of chloro- and fluorocarbons, including C4F8, used for silicon etching. It's not really possible to trap the stuff, so it goes up the stack and depletes the ozone layer.
* A large number of deposition and etching systems, each with very large vacuum pumps running continuously. We shut these off at Christmas, but that's it.
This is just for a small-scale research lab. For an industrial fab, this would be multiplied many times over. Just making the silicon chips has a nontrivial environmental impact.
Get the job done with an OS that doesn't waste cpu cycles. Also how much is sucked out by viruses/spyware/... and then all the anti-virus/spyware/.. utilities to fight them.
Save energy and be more secure.
user group
http://www.os2voice.org/
eComStation
http://www.ecomstation.com/
eComStation preloaded
http://www.curtissystemssoftware.com/preloads.htm
You know, you could very easily prove me wrong by providing a link to any argument against anthropogenic global climate change that hasn't already been debunked about a million times. Just because my argument doesn't follow proper forms doesn't mean my conclusion is wrong. You do the very same thing by asserting that I am wrong without supporting your point. Go ahead, post a link.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Pseudoscience at its worst, come on we all know the following:
* Building a new PC is far less environmentally friendly than upgrading, which is less than just keeping the existing hardware. The power/resources saved by newer more economical components will be shadowed by the amount of power/resources invested to manufacture these new components & the wastage associated with the disposal of the old components.
* Vista requires a significant amount more power to run than XP, this simple known fact highlights the ignorance of the author(s)
* Mobile CPU's are much more power friendly, come on, how can they justify their choice when they even list it as the top offender in power usage....
* Wireless components are more power efficient then a simple wire because.... Idiots.
* A simple power meter would be a lot more accurate than mathing the Watt ratings on all the components.
GPLv2: I want my rights, I want my phone call! DRM: What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?
'You do the very same thing by asserting that I am wrong without supporting your point.'
Oh, not at all. You might be 100% correct. Of course, you also may not be correct. I assert that I disagree with you. Or, rather, I haven't accepted your argument. I consider myself quite ignorant on this topic. Thing is, I consider anybody who doesn't consider themselves ignorant on this topic to be not terribly credible.
We've never studied a system as complex as the climate. I think any conclusions that are drawn with our current level of knowledge are suspect at best.
I think there are plenty common-sense approaches to minimizing environmental impact that DON'T involve making massive negative impacts on economies.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
The problem isn't slow changes over a long period of time but relatively fast changes. There is very little that could actually kill the human line off but there are costs associated with having to adapt.
I tried to make a green PC once. I thought I did a really good job.
Then some Greenpeace hippies beat the snot out of me for using up 4 cans of aerosol spraypaint....
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
By providing an example of a scenario that to modern humans is a "very bad thing"? I mean he's effectively supporting gore and co.'s argument.
Agreed. But then you'll have someone drop theirs into a dock, with a big ol' monitor, optical mouse, speakers, and whatever other peripherals are connected and you're probably no better off at that point.
It's pretty well established that of those few who even buy laptop docking stations, even fewer actually use them. Seriously, what percentage of laptops even HAVE a docking station port on 'em anymore? So yeah, sure, you're not much better off at that point, but that point is seldom reached.If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Just this week I've been looking at a potential use of a hacked Asus WL-500G plus OpenWRT. This Asus router has 2 USB ports. The OpenWRT package has some web servers available... and a lot of other stuff.
Since Gore's argument is just to reduce what we're doing now, the "we don't know enough" argument supports him, not detracts from him.
Cars and trucks account for less than 1/4 of CO2 emissions, or "slightly" less than "greatly to blame".
While Hummers and pickup trucks a convenient easy target, electric power generation is by far the #1 culprit (especially coal burning, however even nuclear power plants have a tremendous carbon cost). And while transportation is getting much better, electricity consumption has only been getting worse.
3.5" hard disks are hogs at the trough and you can save yourself pocketbook pain (and decibels) by using 2.5" notebook drives in your PC. OS X spins disks down nicely and Apple machines become dormant very effectively.
Everyone who buys a big LCD monitor without looking at the wattage is not doing the power grid a favour. The best value in an LCD monitor seems to be the 19" screen -- anything bigger is a hog at the trough, regardless of who makes it. Philips makes a 19" LCD monitor that only uses 34 watts.
Next... your video cards need special processors and fans if you want the latest glitzy effects. Do you really need this stuff? Fanless video cards and integrated video may not give your Beryl, Spaces, or Aero, but I haven't seen anything in these features that is essential to fun and productive computing.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
///ly safe computer.
It's when you throw it out that it hurts the enviroment.
duh!!!
Energy uses of Macs:
h tml
iMac(17-inch): 180W (56W idle)
iMac(24-inch): 220W (120W idle)
Mac mini: 110W (21W idle)
Macbook Pro (17-inch): 85W (26W idle)
According to Apple's specs: http://www.apple.com/environment/resources/specs.
This guy has actually used a watt meter: http://lancej.blogspot.com/2006/03/pc-electricity- consumption.html
HESTON: You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There's been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land. Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away -- all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval. Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years. Earth has survived everything in its time.
It will certainly survive us. If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. Might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the earth would survive our folly, only we would not. If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It's powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. You think this is the first time that's happened? Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive glass, like fluorine.
When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself. In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time. Hundred years ago we didn't have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try. We've been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we're gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.
Just a few days ago, I was looking for new power supplies. The cheapest I found 80%+ PSUs like Seasonic were over $40, meanwhile, 70% efficient PSUs are $10 (both prices including S+H). It will take quite a while to pay off the difference in electricity, even here in CA, and my PSUs don't seem to survive very long to begin with.
Incidentally, is this guy a complete moron???
From TFA:
They certainly can, but most don't. Mine max-out around 90W + 30W LCD.
Everything drains more power than needed. Nothing is 100% efficient, nor can it possibly be.
As opposed to non-certified PSUs that run at 500W when the system only needs 20? What? That doesn't even remotely make any sense.
An efficient 500-watt PSU always drains more than 500 watts of power as well...
Well, he's just completely defeated the purpose of this "green PC" by telling people to throw away perfectly good working components. Good job.
Also, it's hard to take his "green PC" seriously with a Core 2 Duo, instead of something like a Turion (or a Geode like the OLPC), which would uses about 1/4th the power. Saying it's "green" because it is lower power than a P4 is setting the bar pretty low...
This is an awfully brain-dead article for
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Green plants MIGHT grow better if we didn't, you know, keep cutting them down to make parking lots and to feed cattle. ;-P
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
OK so because we don't understand the precise nature of the harm we *may* be causing to the Earth we should not bother doing anything until we actually know for certain? That my friend is like the man standing on the top deck of a sinking ship and saying to the people panicking around him "I won't accept that we are in any danger until I see water at my feet."
Oh, and the environmental impact of humans on the world *has* been extensively studied ever since hunter-gatherers realized they couldn't hunt and gather indiscriminately forever. The climatic effects of human activity have been studied and known for years. Just not by you, apparently.
I hate printers.
" we should not bother doing anything until we actually know for certain?"
You really didn't read my post, did you? Do I think we should immediately undertake absolutely any action that may mitigate climate change, regardless of the cost? No. Absolutely not. I think that would be incredibly irresponsible.
Yet that's exactly what people are screaming for. "DO SOMETHING!" cry the people who became environmentalists by watching Al Gore's movie. Thing is, "DO SOMETHING!" isn't good science, or good public policy.
Do the right thing, carefully making sure that the thing you think is the right thing is indeed the right thing. Please don't bankrupt any nations when doing it.
" Just not by you, apparently."
We've already established that. Just because I'm ignorant of this particular subject (and, again, I think this subject is far, far too complex for anybody to be anything other than ignorant on the subject) doesn't make me stupid, or wrong.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Okay, I'll bite. Fuck you. Fuck you seven ways to Sunday. Fuck you until the cows come home. The thing that really pisses me off about the Al Gore story isn't the fact that he's using 20x the average amount of juice. In and of itself, that's actually kind of newsworthy, even for a dyed-in wool liberal Gore fan like myself. It's that, lost amongst all this fair and balanced coverage of the issue, is the fact that every single last electron of that is offset by purchasing green power credits. That's right, neocon wankers! Gore is carbon neutral. Back to square fucking one!
Nothing confirms my feeling of being right on this issue more than seeing all you little asshats aiming for new lows in character assassination in lieu of actually debating the issue. Can't win it on the merits?
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
This isn't actually an Extreme Tech article, it's a PC Mag article.
A friend of mine sent this to me recently since I'm somewhat active in environmental circles and also a "tech" guy in some senses to my friends. I'll note here the same thing I noted to them:
You may as well just buy a Mac mini. 66% power usage (110 watts for Mac mini vs. 168 for this guy's setup), no Vista (100% better if you ask me), no time spent buying separate components and assembling them (easy!!), and Apple has a nice trade-in/recycling program, not to mention they're compliant with EU environmental standards.
And these days you can even run Windows on it if you really really have to for some strange reason. No, I'm not a Mac fanboy. I'm just pointing out the obvious. Greenest, easiest PC you can buy? A Mac. Someone please prove me wrong buy pointing to a "greener" PC from Dell, HP, Gateway or some other major manufacturer.
How thw fuck is this "informative"? It's some dumbass asking a (tired and by now illegitimate) question.
While all you suckers are buying energy-efficient devices I'm going to be powering my next computer with a fucking V8 that runs on the souls of starving African babies. Mwuhahahahaha.
What is he actually purchasing with those credits.
According to the TVA the 'GREEN POWER SWITCH' requires you to purchase power in blocks that is supposed to come from more friendly sources, such as wind farms. They freely admit though, that the green power sites are connected to the general grid and are supplying power to the grid whether you buy the 'green' power blocks or not.
Also when the wind doesn't blow, your 'green' power blocks buy nothing, because the power not supplied from the wind farms has to be made up from conventional power plants. I think they should be upfront with this and say that they are going to raise everyones rates to pay for wind farms, etc...
Lately the conservative media have regarded these carbon credits similar the the indulgences that the Catholic Church was issuing about the time of Martin Luther. This is an interesting analogy (and imperfect) but in both cases the indulgence or carbon credit does more to make one feel less guilty about their lifestyle than does any measurable good.
My PC uses a 7300GT. It has the horsepower to run Aero if I had Vista on it even though there is no fan on the thing. Alas it is used as a Linux display and just shows KDE, emacs, eclipse, Firefox and perhaps a xterm or two. I also play movies on the thing.
Bob
bob@Osprey:~>
we should make our computers from dominoes!: http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/ 02/0040228
If you really want to reduce power consumption on the screen side of things, Emagin produce some 800x600 OLED 'LCD' glasses that power from the USB port, but the price is hefty as they recently tripled them from around $500 to around $1500 (though around $700 on eBay).
There's an article in a recent Electronics Weekly all about OLEDs and how they use about a quarter the power of an equivilant LCD screen mainly because there's no backlight.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
Actually, laptops are generally designed to be very energy efficient. The power supplies are not. They are designed to be cheap to manufacture, small, and to transform just enough DC power to power a laptop. They get quite warm.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
This guy must be marketing to idiots. I have no other explanation of why he's advertising the absence of lead in components never known to use lead, such as heat sinks, optical drives, power supplies, etc.
I also have no idea why he's using power supplies and heat sinks with fans when there are fanless options (and hence less power consumption). Or why not go the whole hog and try and eliminate fans altogether?
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Only took one power bill to convince my wife to send the computer to standby whenever she walked away. What I need to do next is find some way to have it auto-standby after a short idle period unless one of a list of programs is running. Getting control over that list is the issue that prevents setting the auto-standby to less than 2 hours.
Regards,
Ross
What bothers me is that this article reads like an Intel advertisement. I'll acknowledge that the Core 2 Duo is an excellent part, but when they compare it to its predecessor (Pentium D), any part looks good.
The CPU uses Wide Dynamic Execution (hence there are more instructions per clock cycle)
they can't just say "4-wide"?
and Advanced Smart Cache (to make sure that more executions are completed)
No, Texas makes sure more executions are completed. Advanced Smart Cache makes sure that more instructions are completed? I thought all programs had the same number of instructions.
and therefore uses less energy to do the same tasks.
OK. More instructions are completed, and there for uses less power for a given task. Of course.
The fellow that had the idea to make a "green" PC had his heart in the right place but his actions are way off... 1) Why on earth would you use a case made from non-recyclable plastics rather than recyclable aluminum? 2) Why on earth would you make a PC instead of making/using a laptop? 3) Why on earth would you use the most resource-hungry OS known to man to date (read that as Vista) instead of using Linux along with most/all of its power management controls (i.e. laptop-mode, gnome-power-manager, etc.)? Allow me to show a counter example: I have a Lenovo Thinkpad X60s. It's an ultra-portable laptop running Ubuntu 6.10. After turning off the damn CPU's second core and forcing the primary core to operate at the slowest possible speed of 1000mHz (lol), along with making some power adjustments in the machine's BIOS as well as using laptop-mode to modify the HDD handling, turning down the LCD brightness, etc., I can run the wifi along with a browser, email and IM clients, an MP3 player, a few SSH connections, a text editor, etc., all for just 12.1W of power. When I close the screen that goes down to 9W. Take into account the 12W portable, fold-able solar panel I got to accompany it and the whole electrical profile changes... with the exception of watching a movie or compiling a kernel I am consistently (at least during the daylight hours) taking in more power than I'm using. That's about as green a computer as you can get with today's mainstream technology.
Last week, I heard a muffled "pop" coming from my server, followed by it powering off. Sure enough, after six years, the PSU had finally succumbed to Bad Capacitor Syndrome. I picked a new PSU that had active power factor correction and a high-efficiency design - and found that my UPS was reporting about 40% less load, in spite of the only change being the power supply.
Switching from a CRT monitor to an LCD made another big difference. It's surprising how much of a power hog a CRT can be. The 22" widescreen I have now uses less than half the power of my old 17" CRT!
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
This is an example of Gorespeak:
I'm on the Al Gore diet: I eat as much as I want, and pay somebody else to starve.
- They are not much more than an LCD screen, so would use less electricity
- They would put out less heat, therefor less need for air conditioning, and even less electricity.
- They would not have to be backed up, so you would not have to leave them on at night for the net backup program.
- Since the thin clients wouldn't be on at night, that means less heat generated, and less need for air conditioning
- There would be less to dispose of
- There would be no PC to replace, everytime msft forced an "upgrade"
What's the biggest 2.5" drive you can get? And at what cost? A 500gb 3.5" drive sucks about 12w and costs about $150. You'd need at least 3 2.5" drives for the same storage at a price of about $600. Those 3 drives would suck about 8w in operation and how much more energy to build than one 500gb drive? A 750gb drive uses about the same amount as a 500gb and it would take 6 2.5" drives to replace it. These drives would suck up about 18w, or nearly 50% MORE energy than a single 3.5" drive. They'd also cost about five times more than the 3.5" drive. If they were configured in raid5 they might be a bit more reliable than a single 3.5" drive, but you could buy a hell of a lot of energy credits with that extra $800 spent on the laptop drives, use 2 750gb drives in raid 1, and still come out way ahead in terms of "being green."
The other thing that gets me about the article is he buys a 965 motherboard. I HAVE a 965 motherboard and am about to replace it with a 945 motherboard BECAUSE of all the extra energy it dumps into the case - that gma3000 gets hotter than hell, and doesn't do video and desktop stuff any better than the much lower power 945.
If you're really interested in saving energy, make a raid out of a couple of flash cards and stick'em on the IDE channel. Power down the storage discs when the machine is idle and use flash for the system.
I wonder if he'll be running one of the distributed computing nodes on his "low power" machine?
I'm not defending Al's being an energy glutton, but you've still got it all wrong. On net, he's still responsible for less carbon than each of those vaunted twenty households. A lot less. Like, say, zero. The net carbon impact of Gore Manor is zero. So who is made worse off? Who's starving? Nobody.
In your words, Gore may eat as much as he wants, but he grows his own food. And if everybody did like Al, guess what? We'd all be fat and happy.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Actually, in this case I think it does. This stuff isn't complex. The carbon cycle isn't brain surgery, petroleum use and concepts like "net release" are fairly simple and absolute climatic change versus rate of climatic change is a fairly unsophisticated distinction. If you are unable to grasp even the basics of this subject, then perhaps you should STFU, DIAF or both. Perhaps, if you were to do the latter, the CO2 release would be worth it.
Personally, I think you are not only not versed in this subject, but you're also ignorant of economics. Claiming that the one side is being sensationalist while having an equally uninformed view of the other is pretty stupid. Did you perhaps think that the other side, who have billions to lose, may perhaps be spreading sensationalism to protect their vast personal vested interests? Oh no, that can't be the case, it's only hippies who spread FUD. Corporations never do that. Perhaps you'd be little less protective of big money if you realized that the economic impact of "doing something" won't be hundreds of thousands of lost jobs. Even if it were, do you really think that multi-millionaire CEOs care about you and your friends' jobs? No, they care about their profit margins. News flash: You're more of a mindless sensationalist than the left wing hippies you so loudly criticize, there is no evidence whatsoever that the cost of being environmentally friendly is lost profits. In fact here is an example showing just the opposite, and here's an article written in 1998 so you can see the progress that has been made.
There's an example of "doing something" that's not only good for the environment, but economically great too. Oh, and it's a 13 year old project. Now, what was that about all this environmental stuff being new, misunderstood and economically dubious?
I hate printers.
On net
This is the part that gets me. I've replaced my furnace with a high efficiency model. Replaced my water heater with a high efficiency model. Drive slower than others, driving a more efficient car than most. Chase after the kids to turn the lights out, etc. Build a high efficiency PC. In other words, I do take an effort. But I'm not carbon neutral - because I didn't go out and buy the anti carbon tickets. Quite a few of "the vaunted twenty households" don't have the extra cash to buy them, either.
Al Gore. Reinvents himself as Mr. Enviroment. But he doesn't "pay the price" in his lifestyle - he just buys a low carbon title. They probably cost him the equivalent of a couple of speaking engagements.
How about an OS that actually has a userbase? eComStation sucks.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
You know, I've been wondering -- why the heck do desktop LCD monitors take that much power? And, for that matter, why are they so damn thick? You go to the store and look at laptops, and even the 17" screens are only 1/4" thick, with power consumption on the order of 34 watts for the whole laptop, not just the screen. So why can't they just make a stand-alone laptop-style LCD? It shouldn't be that hard!
That's not true -- all those things will still run even on (newer) integrated video. In fact, Beryl probably runs best on the Intel GMA950, because it's probably the fastest thing with Free Software (that is, not buggy and difficult to install) 3D drivers.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Indeed. Even if older versions can be found in some repositories, software older than 5 years is most probably useless for most mainstream websites of today.
Minimum hardware requirements I guess means a machine which can run the immediate precedent version of the current mainstream OS.... So now that Windows Vista are out, minimum requirements dictate a box which can run Windows XP.
"Sum Ergo Cogito"
My HP Jornada 720 is a little old but it uses 7 watts when plugged in, try to beat that.
Being that most PCs have a relatively high heat output, I just turn off the thermostat in my bedroom, so that the excess heat in my box warms the rest of the room.
My computer consumes about 400W. The baseboard heater consumes 1000W. The lower constant heating is more comfortable to deal with, since most electric heating systems alternate between uncomfortably high heat, then uncomfortably low cold before the thermostat cycles on.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
I have a OneClick Intelligent Mains Panel http://www.oneclickpower.co.uk/acatalog/#aP7NFOC :)
and have been feeling smug ever since. I have a dual monitor set up, router for the room and powered speakers that used to be on all the time, even if my PCs were off. Now, a few seconds after my PC shutdowns, the power is cut from everything else. Seems a good idea to me
TFA leaves out the one bit of information I'd actually be interested in: how AMD's chips stack up against Intel's, power consumption-wise. The article talks about how much more efficient the Core 2s are compared to the Pentium D, which I don't doubt. But you can get Athlon X2s these days that only draw 35 watts, compared to (IIRC) 65 watts for a Core 2 Duo. Maybe someone out there who knows more than I do about this stuff can explain why that wouldn't make the Athlon the "greener" chip?
Read my blog.
Desktop TFTs have much brighter backlights than laptops. Try sitting with your back to a window with the sun coming in, and using both and you'll see the difference. This accounts for both the extra thickness and the extra power needed by the desktop variants.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I'd ask for a mod up on it, but... this is slashdot.
I really am tired of all this self loathing. I'm going to drive my Hummer (in need of a major tune-up) around the corner (maybe 200 yards) to the store to buy some more of those old AMDs that would ignite. I'm using them in a new rig to heat my home. It's friggin cold here (global warming... pfft!).
3cx.org - A truly bad website.
The problem is, in order to achieve the 7.2 gigawatt savings you describe, you need to replace 600M power supplies. Factor in transportation, $30/hr for labor (many people would have to rentageek to accomplish these savings), etc., and maybe it still works out to a net gain, but it's probably not the biggest net gain available. Such a big gain requires a commensurately large effort.
Compare this to the situation we'd have within a few years if hardware manufacturers adopted Google's suggestions for redesigning power supplies. First, the energy savings would be far larger than we'd get if every computer owner did as you suggest. Second, the effort required would be far less than would be needed to make this transition; new computers are being manufactured all the time, and old ones going to landfills. Also, the gains would occur throughout the life of the computer, where retrofitting would only save energy for about half the life of the computer (on average).
Amdahl's Law says that, when you improve part of a system, the maximum amount of improvement you can achieve is no greater than the fraction of resources the improved part used originally. If you write a program that spends 5% of its time in a subroutine, no matter how cleverly you optimize that subroutine, you can never make the program more than 5% faster. The implication is that, when deciding on an optimizing strategy, you usually can make the biggest gains by spending your time optimizing the code that the program exercises the most.
The same principle holds for trying to reduce the energy you're using. For most people, computers are not their biggest home energy sinks. Refrigerators and air conditioners are much bigger users. So Amdahl's Law suggests that it might be more effective for 60M people to replace their ugly, yellow 1980's-era fridge with a modern high-efficiency model than it would be for 600M people to attempt to retrofit their computers (especially considering that fridges generally have longer lives than computers, and are running 24/7). Replacing old or inefficient air conditioners would probably yield amazing results as well.
While I'm happy to do everything that I can in my own life to reduce carbon emissions, it's impossible to get that same commitment out of everyone. I find it highly unlikely that you could ever motivate a large fraction of computer users to retrofit their computers. If we could find a way to get that many people that motivated, it would be an absolute tragedy to waste that motivation on such an incremental improvement in efficiency. A tiny fraction of that commitment to change would be sufficient to get the major manufacturers to make sure that every box they ship was more energy efficient in the first place, and we could spend the surplus motivation on whiskey and hookers.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Green computing;
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_computing
I replaced a three-year-old Dell with 17" flat panel with a 20" iMac Core 2 Duo. The iMac is much faster and consumes between 60-80 watts on average, less than half what the Dell with its monitor consumed.
Sent from my iPhone
Well, never mind about that other guy. With your impressive employment of ad hominem attacks, I bestow upon you the title of master debater.
Permit me to reciprocate.
In two words, fuck you. I spend a fair amount of money and effort to be a responsible conservationist, and you denigrate me because I haven't drunk your particular brand of kool-aid. Fuck you, fuck every other sanctimonious pseudo-environmentalist twat you agree with, who thinks that the only opinions are their own, and the wrong one. Small minded pricks, the lot of you. Go buy some carbon offset credits to cover the repulsive outgassing from your ill-mannered pie hole.
Eat my dick, and I'll teach you something about emissions.
Now THAT, my friend, is how you do an ad hominem attack.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Random and weird software I've written.
I agree. Here are some hard stats from a plain old Dell desktop that I have at my office:
Dell Dimension Celeron (P4-based) 2.4GHz Windows XP with 1GB of DDR266 RAM and 2 5400 RPM hard drives. I'm not counting the display costs, these are just for the main unit:
Completely turned off: 2.9W
Standby: 5.1W
Idle with hard disks spun down: 57.5W
Idle: 62.5W
Running a relatively busy program: 106W
Peak usage during bootup: 115W
Interestingly, my new Core 2 Duo 2.13GHz Optiplex 745 with 2GB DDR2-800 and a single 250GB hard drive with integrated Intel graphics consumes just slightly more power than this, although I forget the exact stats. The Optiplex 745 is supposed to be the first of Dell's explicitly energy-conscious business PCs, and they seem to have succeeded. Notice that all these stats are quite a bit less than the "300-500 watts" quoted by the author.
I built a similar machine for myself just recently with a low end Seasonic and Thermaltake Typhoon for noise control. The machine it replaced was a P3, and I still have a number of fanless P2 machines in my network closet that work just fine for the tasks involved. That said, I also live in an apt in a Canadian city with baseboard electrical heat, so whatever heat I do get from these machines is cost free as far as I'm concerned for six months of the year, as it only diverts electricity out of the baseboard heaters.
On a more serious note, if America was more into responsible government, Intel would answering a lot of questions right now about gigawatts of generation capacity compromised by their hideous P4 design, which I refused to purchase. The computer industry ships several hundred million PCs a year. Over the design lifecycle, Intel must have shipped on the order of half a billion P4 systems all consuming (for no good reason) 30 to 60 watts more than necessary. They had a perfectly good alternative to the power-hungry "Netburst" (pron. "juicesucker") proposed in the design stage. That's pretty hard to justify as a use of resources on a crowded planet.
Too bad we don't have the tape recording of the conversation from Enron to Intel exec holding masses of Enron stock: "Isn't that a beautiful thing? Burn, Prescott, burn." Gotta wonder if some former Intel exec is presently shacked up with his hooker girlfriend on the Cayman islands.
Being a hypocrite doesn't make you wrong, it just makes you a hypocrite.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
How about we put an end to crappy spy wear, ad wear, bloated OSs and websites full of useless flash in countless annoying adds over 20 unnecessarily pages, and I can go back to using my perfectly good little PII laptop rather then these monstrosities that suck up power and blow out heat enough to raise the indoor temp a couple degrees in the summer just so I can freaken read an article on how to save power. /angry rant in run on sentence
Great. Another third grader enters the discussion.
No, that's a rant with no content and lots of empty vitriol. My previous post wasn't any kind of attack, it would best be described as a "scathing response". I assume you think that my "particular brand of kool-aid" is a reference to my small minded arguments and single track arguments, and that by calling me a "small minded prick" you are accusing me of not being able to see some kind of bigger picture.
Please explain to me your view on the subject. Properly rebut the points I have raised and the many references I used to support them. What do you do that makes you, in your own mind, able to claim the title of "responsible conservationist".
I hate printers.
"Another third grader enters the discussion."
Uh huh. With the other poster, I was joking around. You're an asshole.
"Please explain to me your view on the subject."
No. Fuck off. I owe you nothing. I do not have to justify anything to you.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Well sorry, but it didn't sound like it at all. Text kinda sucks for conveying tone.
I hate printers.
How about an OS that actually has a userbase? eComStation sucks.
Well, if you are going to change OS, how about a mac mini...
Finally all those criticisms about using laptop parts dont seem so sensible.
Sure it has lower performance than if it used desktop components. You know what? I don't miss the performance and I have been smiling a long time about having a low power server tucked away on a kitchen bench.
(Added bonus - long lifespan of apple hardware means less landfill).
If you are going to change OS on environmental grounds, get a mini.
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
At least from my experience with my Mac mini. Even with Eclipse running and compiling things in the background, my power usage has never climbed above 60 watts.
SilentPCReview did some tests with iMacs as well. They loved them (no wonder IMHO). They did a 2xCPUBurn+ATI tool und XP to stress both cores and graphic card and never got more than 73 watts power usage even WITH the LCD on (link).
The iMac 24" used a maximum of 138 watts (link).
Bye egghat.
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel