'Green IT': are we missing the bigger picture?

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RE: Green IT': are we missing the bigger picture?: courtesy: cjm LT

Why should anyone feel defensive about "being cheap?"

America and Americans are in debt to the eyeballs and have no savings because we spend the money as fast as we get it and then we borrow so we can spend some more. The people are in hock to consumer credit companies and the nation is pushing bonds to China.

We rarely speak of citizens anymore...we're now consumers.

Money represents energy.

Given the environmental and economic costs (including long term energy availability and cost), an IT sector based on planned obsolescence that emphasizes ongoing consumption of throw away manufactured goods is absurd.

One of the most attractive aspects of GNU/linux is that it redefines short lived,throw away, consumer items as durable goods through rigorous adherence to backwards hardware compatibility on the part of kernel maintainers and several of the mainstream distributions.

And when new hardware is purchased, GNU/Linux permits purchase of hardware resources sized to meet the demands of the load, without the overhead imposed by an overly (and arbitrarily) bloated OS.

Most of us "get" the idea of "free as in beer and free as in speech," but we're overlooking another important factor that could be exploited to boost the rate of adoption of open standards, FOSS, and Gnu/Linux, among governments and other large institutions:

GNU/linux is the environmentally friendly OS.

Computer hardware represents embedded energy. Embedded energy, is the energy derived from fossil fuels, that went into its manufacture.

That is embedded energy that caused greenhouse gas emissions when it was embedded in the hardware we refer to as a computer.

On a Microsoft driven average three year hardware upgrade cycle, that embedded energy is wasted and winds up in a landfill -- and more greenhouse gas is produced to build replacement hardware with its own embedded energy load on-board to be under-utilized over its short service life as a Windows desktop or server.

All but one of the machines I administer at my small business have been "recycled" after I obtained them from other businesses "upgrading" to the latest version of Windows. The one new machine, I assembled myself, from "new old stock," components five years ago, for use as a terminal server for a LAN of "recycled" PC based Xterminals, and it is only a PIII.

The average age of machines on the LAN I built and maintain is 12 years -- that is four times the fossil fuel embedded energy efficiency of a similarly sized Windows shop running on a Microsoft driven average 3 year hardware upgrade cycle.

Moreover, ever more powerful hardware consumes more and more greenhouse gas emitting fossil fuel in the form of AC utility power. We don't see many new PCs with 250 watt power supplies these days, do we?

The bottom line is this: Windows contributes to global climate change. GNU/Linux is the environmentally friendly and responsible choice.

Promote that to governments and large corporations under pressure to respond to concerns about global climate change and fossil fuel depletion, and there isn't a ready made answer they can provide to justify their continued reliance on Microsoft, Windows, and proprietary standards, that help dictate Windows use by everyone else who interacts with them.; Posted by: n0neXn0ne Posted on: 10/11/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use