On Wed, 2007-09-12 at 08:47 +0100, Alex Hudson wrote: > > I don't think that answers his question, actually - whether or not it's > economically cheaper or environmentally cheaper to run older hardware > rather than upgrade to newer is an interesting one, and increasing taxes > only answers the question by mooting it. Taxes are a terribly blunt tool > for making people make the "right" choice.
Yep do you really think putting 4x4 road tax up a few 100 quid will stop someone with 50 grand to spend buying the vehicle of their desires ;-) make it 10 grand and it might have an effect and some people would still buy them as a status symbol for their wealth. Unless the taxation is huge rich people will just pay it. Neither do I have a lot of faith that a government would hypothecate this tax to environmental issues. > Running old hardware is not without expense. While solid-state > electronics is reliable, hard drives, power supplies, cooling fans, etc. > etc., all are not. Is it better to keep trying to replace those parts? Machines without hard drives or other peripherals. Slower (older) processors use less power so a discless thin client is better than a fat client but it could be that getting away from Intel CISC processors and using ARM like RISC devices is better still. > We're also a lot better at designing environmentally friendlier hardware > than we used to be, too, e.g. Ndiyo (http://www.ndiyo.org/), an > ultra-thin client which could conceivably have a useful lifespan of many > tens of years with only PSU replacement required. > > And we're at the stage where we can run many useful services on > low-power hardware, witness the NSLU2 "Slug" and the various other > commodity hardware solutions which are doing things previously only > "servers" could do. The free software community in particular has the > software which makes this feasible. Its highly probable in general terms that getting off Wintel fat clients will enable power reduction. There is a limit to innovation if the constant constraint is it has to work on Windows Vista with umbteen gig of disc space, RAM and a fast CISC processor. So tax Windows Vista to hell and back :-) > In many circumstances the taxes on the new would have to be extreme to > make it a worse deal than re-using the existing. > > Cheers, > > Alex. > > > > _______________________________________________ > Fsfe-uk mailing list > Fsfe-uk@gnu.org > http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-uk -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. _______________________________________________ Fsfe-uk mailing list Fsfe-uk@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-uk
