5 ms·

My guess (and it is a guess) is that the extra heat / electricity consumption is pretty negligible compared to the amount of energy and raw materials needed to

My guess (and it is a guess) is that the extra heat / electricity consumption is pretty negligible compared to the amount of energy and raw materials needed to manufacture and distribute a new computer.

pdimitar 5y ago
True, but as I said in another sibling comment -- the machines get manufactured anyway (since the production capacity is mostly optimized around the needs of big customers) so I might as well get a much greener machine now and hold on to it for 10+ years because I will burn less CO2 while I am using it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jhoechtl 5y ago
  You save more (money and ressources) by not buying a new engine.
  - pdimitar 5y ago
    You assume that my goal is to spend the absolute minimum sum on tech over my entire life. That's not it. My goal is to spend the minimum realistic sum for tech that enables me to do my job well and long-term so I am financially free and help the businesses that hire me, and keep improving my craft (for which I have love ever since a pre-teen). That doesn't equal holding on to a MacBook Pro 2012 until 2030. It equals keeping an old machine around to check if the code in the final version of my current PR is well-optimized -- but I work on a much stronger machine because stuff like LSP and re-running tests is crucial for productivity. And we all know that most dev tooling is generally extremely demanding.
- frereubu 5y ago
  That logic makes the "re-use" part of "reduce, re-use, recycle" redundant. You're part of a society that, when acting roughly in tandem, can make large-scale chages. If everyone followed your logic nothing would ever change and, if I'm honest, it sounds more like a rationalisation for indulging in new tech (an impulse which I share!)
  - pdimitar 5y ago
    I believe you're frustrated with the world's stance towards ecology -- for good reason. I am too. Almost nobody who can make a true difference gives a f_ck. But I am looking at it historically and holistically while you seem to want to argue theoreticals that don't have basis in our current reality. Let me be 100% clear here: I am sharing your stance in general but there are complications I am forced to consider and act accordingly with: - Software gets slower with time, so I have to upgrade. Me upgrading only once 7-8 years is, I think, a fairly heroic effort on my side. I've seen businesses that blindly upgrade everyone's laptops every 3 years, zero questions asked. - You and I have no recourse whatsoever against the big players who make disposable tech. You think I don't want them fined all the way to bankruptcy and even jail? I would love that. But we can't make it happen. - My "logic" is simply of a family man with a ton of responsibilities and a pretty demanding job. Please don't make me the villain because I am doing my very best just to function and have a few precious relaxing hours per day. Most of the common folk will never be willing to sacrifice the little "me time" they have just so they free some ecological bandwidth... which will be quickly consumed and re-balanced (in the wrong direction) by those who create huge and environmentally disastrous manufacturing facilities. - I love to indulge in a new tech but I have mostly tamed this wrong impulse. Doesn't mean I have to hold on to inadequate machines until they fall apart in my hands however. --- Again, I get where you are coming from but please don't vent on me for doing the best that I can without sacrificing all the comfort and free time that I already don't have much of. There are much bigger villains out there that deserve your frustration more than I do.
    - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
      I would add that it's okay (or, at minimum, better) to recognize that you personally upgrade more often than you should, while also realizing we should maintain support for older hardware so everyone else isn't also forced to upgrade too often.
      - pdimitar 5y ago
        Agreed on that. People who can't upgrade often shouldn't be ignored. Slack and Teams should work non-intrusively on laptops with 4GB of RAM.
everdrive 5y ago
There are ALSO a lot of old cell phones and raspberry Pis and things around. These computers use very little power and are still quite capable. There's NOTHING preventing them from being useful for a wide range of tasks except for software bloat, or closed platforms. It would not be hard conceptually to build computers to prioritize power consumption, it's simply just not a priority.
- pdimitar 5y ago
  I would love to see and use such machines but as you said, the software isn't there. Sadly nobody is paying to write or improve it.
skew 5y ago
It's smaller, but not actually negligible. An old but oft-cited 2002 study said a laptop with a three year lifecycle took about twice the energy to manufacture as operate. Silicon is much more energy intensive than other materials, with fab energy consumption apparently relatively steady over time on the order of 1 kwh/cm^2 of silicon processed. So, there is a high bar for replacing a computer with a new one to actually save net resources, but an actual 10x reduction in power consumption like replacing a P4 desktop with an RPi is big enough to pay off reasonably quickly.
- frereubu 5y ago
  Interesting - thanks for providing data to contrast with my hunch!
- pdimitar 5y ago
  Quite interesting, thank you! I am even more interested in how the formula works out if you buy one professional laptop (say, Lenovo X13) with a Ryzen CPU -- because they consume less power -- and I am looking forward to reading such an analysis sometime in the future.

pdimitar 5y ago

True, but as I said in another sibling comment -- the machines get manufactured anyway (since the production capacity is mostly optimized around the needs of big customers) so I might as well get a much greener machine now and hold on to it for 10+ years because I will burn less CO2 while I am using it.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jhoechtl 5y ago
You save more (money and ressources) by not buying a new engine.
- pdimitar 5y ago
  You assume that my goal is to spend the absolute minimum sum on tech over my entire life. That's not it. My goal is to spend the minimum realistic sum for tech that enables me to do my job well and long-term so I am financially free and help the businesses that hire me, and keep improving my craft (for which I have love ever since a pre-teen). That doesn't equal holding on to a MacBook Pro 2012 until 2030. It equals keeping an old machine around to check if the code in the final version of my current PR is well-optimized -- but I work on a much stronger machine because stuff like LSP and re-running tests is crucial for productivity. And we all know that most dev tooling is generally extremely demanding.
frereubu 5y ago
That logic makes the "re-use" part of "reduce, re-use, recycle" redundant. You're part of a society that, when acting roughly in tandem, can make large-scale chages. If everyone followed your logic nothing would ever change and, if I'm honest, it sounds more like a rationalisation for indulging in new tech (an impulse which I share!)
- pdimitar 5y ago
  I believe you're frustrated with the world's stance towards ecology -- for good reason. I am too. Almost nobody who can make a true difference gives a f_ck. But I am looking at it historically and holistically while you seem to want to argue theoreticals that don't have basis in our current reality. Let me be 100% clear here: I am sharing your stance in general but there are complications I am forced to consider and act accordingly with: - Software gets slower with time, so I have to upgrade. Me upgrading only once 7-8 years is, I think, a fairly heroic effort on my side. I've seen businesses that blindly upgrade everyone's laptops every 3 years, zero questions asked. - You and I have no recourse whatsoever against the big players who make disposable tech. You think I don't want them fined all the way to bankruptcy and even jail? I would love that. But we can't make it happen. - My "logic" is simply of a family man with a ton of responsibilities and a pretty demanding job. Please don't make me the villain because I am doing my very best just to function and have a few precious relaxing hours per day. Most of the common folk will never be willing to sacrifice the little "me time" they have just so they free some ecological bandwidth... which will be quickly consumed and re-balanced (in the wrong direction) by those who create huge and environmentally disastrous manufacturing facilities. - I love to indulge in a new tech but I have mostly tamed this wrong impulse. Doesn't mean I have to hold on to inadequate machines until they fall apart in my hands however. --- Again, I get where you are coming from but please don't vent on me for doing the best that I can without sacrificing all the comfort and free time that I already don't have much of. There are much bigger villains out there that deserve your frustration more than I do.
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    I would add that it's okay (or, at minimum, better) to recognize that you personally upgrade more often than you should, while also realizing we should maintain support for older hardware so everyone else isn't also forced to upgrade too often.
    - pdimitar 5y ago
      Agreed on that. People who can't upgrade often shouldn't be ignored. Slack and Teams should work non-intrusively on laptops with 4GB of RAM.

everdrive 5y ago

There are ALSO a lot of old cell phones and raspberry Pis and things around. These computers use very little power and are still quite capable. There's NOTHING preventing them from being useful for a wide range of tasks except for software bloat, or closed platforms. It would not be hard conceptually to build computers to prioritize power consumption, it's simply just not a priority.

pdimitar 5y ago
I would love to see and use such machines but as you said, the software isn't there. Sadly nobody is paying to write or improve it.

skew 5y ago

It's smaller, but not actually negligible. An old but oft-cited 2002 study said a laptop with a three year lifecycle took about twice the energy to manufacture as operate. Silicon is much more energy intensive than other materials, with fab energy consumption apparently relatively steady over time on the order of 1 kwh/cm^2 of silicon processed. So, there is a high bar for replacing a computer with a new one to actually save net resources, but an actual 10x reduction in power consumption like replacing a P4 desktop with an RPi is big enough to pay off reasonably quickly.

frereubu 5y ago
Interesting - thanks for providing data to contrast with my hunch!
pdimitar 5y ago
Quite interesting, thank you! I am even more interested in how the formula works out if you buy one professional laptop (say, Lenovo X13) with a Ryzen CPU -- because they consume less power -- and I am looking forward to reading such an analysis sometime in the future.