PC makers vying to be greenest

[KiwiCoromandel]

Personal computer makers are increasingly prioritizing "green" strategies, creating a pivotal point of competition for customers that are becoming more attuned to their financial – and societal – benefits.

read more: http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/gadgets/...-to-be-greenest

source: Reuters

image: Fair Use/photobucket: GREEN PC...part of sales strategy

[Redneck4sure]

As always, I'm on the other end of the spectrum. When I see a hard drive that is highlighted as being "green technology" I skip over it to the next one. I don't see how variable speed rotation is going to make the unit more reliable or faster. It may not decrease the reliability. The manufacturer would have those figures and I have not seen any comparisons. They just brag about the green hard drive uses less power. Hard drives use little power anyway. I doubt the savings would be a buck a yr but I haven't researched it and done the math.

Okay, I will do the math....It will only take a minute....

The 1.5TB drives I just bought use about 8watts max according to the specs on the drives. In fact, I just measured one and that is exactly what it uses: 8 watts at max use. If a green hard drive saved 25% that would be 2 watts. If you run the computer 12 hours a day for a month you are talking about .72kw hours. My electric rate is 13 cents per kw hour. That means I would save $1.12 a year if I ran my computer 12 hours a day, everyday and IF the green hard drive saved 25%. It might save a little more or less. I haven't looked at the claims that close. If the green drive is $10 more, it would take 8 yrs to save enough to pay for the difference between it and a standard drive. Personally, I wouldn't buy one if they were the same price until someone I know that worked at a service center said the green drives had a lower failure rate.

I always look for high reliability and low cost to maintain. For instance, my central air is a 13 seer. A higher seer unit cost much more but the cost to maintain it also is much higher. A motor for mine is $100 but the variable speed motor for higher seer units is around $700 and the variable speed motor is much more likely to fail. The higher seer unit has other energy saving features that make it more likely to fail than the standard models. You can never save enough money in electricity to recoup your money on investment and repairs not to mention the aggravation of your a/c doesn't work. My unit is heat and a/c. Last fall the heat wouldn't work. I diagnosed it as the motherboard and bought one for about $300 if I remember right. I changed it out myself. If I had a higher seer unit, I am not sure I would have been able to figure out the problem which means I would have had to call a repairman. I like simple shit that works and is easier to repair even though it costs more to operate.

I may consider getting a less energy sucking unit and help out the planet when "Mr. Green" Al Gore reduces his electric bill per month to twice my total gross income per month.

[KiwiCoromandel]

i never turn my pc`s off....i have 3 pc`s in the house and 1 in the garage that run continuously...one of them is an AMD Athlon 64 dual processor..it uses enough energy to power a small city....

[Redneck4sure]

This box has cables out the side and homemade racks with hard drives. I moved shit around a couple of weeks ago when I bought 5 drives (1.5tb each) so I could reduce the number that run all the time. My 850 watt power supply wouldn't run the system without having to turn on the second power supply. I now have it running on just the 850 but have to kick in the additional one when I turn on more drives to back up stuff. The system with both power supplies running will operate 18 drives at the same time thanks to 3 pci adapter cards.