Saturday, July 26, 2014

In using Old Hardware, is value added or value lost?


In using Old Hardware, is value added or value lost?

The simple answer today, is Value Lost.
I want this piece to be brief.

There many for and against and counter argument to this statement.
My argument is based on “Energy Saving”.
But I have a big alibi now.
He is nobody other than Jon Hall.
His nick name or is it his pet name I never say, simply due to my respect for him and his co-author Peter Parfitt.
I got the fear out Linux by reading the book "Joy of Linux", written in hilarious way, in the same tone as “Joy of Sex”.
I had that book, the latter book, and gave it away free in the first opportunity, I had.
A man who has read, “Kinsey Report” as a Medical Student, Joy of Sex was not illuminating to me physiologically.
I must tell you we had only one more book on sex in the faculty.
It was lost.
A junior girl to my batch of students stole it from the medical library.
We had to do some detective and forensic work to nail her down.
Thank good she was our junior and she became a laughing sock/stock in no time.
I can remember two names of women from that batch.
One is a professor in Geneva and the other girl is the when mentioned above.
I do not know what sex exploits she had made and never seen her again in my life.
The professor was wife of my boss who recruited me to the university after a long gap and lapse aboard.
I have the same respect to Jon Hall to my boss and he is a guy like Tin Tin's Captain Haddock at times.
He is not absent minded like him, though.
He writes a value piece for Linux magazine, every month and this is only a summary.

1. I had 6 to 9 computers doing various work for me and three years ago started dismantling one by one.
One and only one reason.
They were consuming huge amount of electricity and my electricity bill was sky rocketing.
One of the reasons is downloading Linux Isos and testing them and writing (always) nice piece, just to keep the developers interested.
They do it free and in their spare time.
My calculation was it is far better to subscribe to Linux magazine (that is less than my one months Electricity Bill) and wait for the DVD that comes with the magazine.
Often double sided.
It saves me on the daily consumption of CD/DVDs which is more than my research slides (Pathology Slides), too.
But I never knew that the Cooling Fan consumes twice as much electricity (must be thrice with the room temperature over 35 degrees centigrade, in day time.)

2. I did not want to donate the old computers to a poor guy who cannot afford it.
He/she won't be able to pay his electricity bill.
On both counts I am in agreement with Jon Hall.
Now the facts I did not know.

1. I always ask the vendor how much electricity it consumes?
Nobody was able to give me the values.

Average “old” desktop consumes 250 to 350 watts.
Gaming computer over 1000 watts.

2. for every watt of usage cooling system consumes two watts.
It is like an electric kettle running not for two minutes for hours on end.
I have cut down my units by 100 units by operating only two computers now.

3. Laptops consume 100 watts.

4. Netbook 17 watts.

5. Tablets, I do not know.

6. One may have to consider the cost of refurbishing.

7. Transport and shipping also costs a lot.

8. New computers are more energy efficient.

So consider sending them to scrap, metal specially to save energy.

Think twice before accepting old hardware.

This was something, I said during tsunami.

Lot of people gave old cloths to the victims.
Most of the victims considered it as a curse or insult than a blessing.
That does not apply to money, even if there is dog shit in it one would wipe it and use them, in this country.
Money corrupts even the best street hawker.
So when you give something FREE make sure to give a new one.

Rest do a garage sale!
 
I gave a very expensive book to a guy who is poor but an intellectual.
I made sure I put a nice cover too.
I let him choose it at the book shop.
I told him, I need to brush through the first few chapters on computer tips.
That time was used to put an adhesive cover and I did not write (donated by) anything on it.
He loves it.