They're cheap enough that my first thought was to pick up a couple and figure out what I'd do with them later, but the disadvantage here is that they're older boxes, which means they're going to be energy hogs (for the performance point, at least).
That's what makes the eco pitch interesting - they're reducing e-waste, which is good, but energy efficiency on newer boxes (especially if you just need minimal performance) is worlds better than what these are offering. On the one hand, the recycling is great, but on the other hand, it's like putting a 1953 Chevy back on the road - sure, we didn't have to manufacture another one, but it still might not be the best thing for the environment.
Given the right uses, like an elementary school computer lab for learning Scratch, Logo, etc; they would be fine.
The problem is they are right on the cusp of the next cycle of Moore's Law, Raspberry Pi is now quad core and 1GB, it puts it in the same class as this machine. The cost of "good enough" compute hardware is going to zero (shipping, financial trans cost will dominate).
The main power draws of these systems will probably be the monitor they are attached to, the older PSU inside, and the hard disk. Keep in mind that for a RPi based solution, you still need to provide all of these. The tiny PSU needed for a RPi will probably be quite efficient, so maybe count that one out.
Also, as great as the RPi 2 is, I still don't think it is the same class as these machines, which have a 3x clock cycle advantage, plus much wider CPUs. For web browsing, this is going to matter way more than 4 cores.
P4s have a horrible stall happy pipeline, the RaspPi has a decent GPU, I'd call it even. For a school environment and a good minimal window manager, the new RaspPi would be excellent for web browsing.
> I haven’t tried any normal desktop applications (other than Chromium), but I’d say the Pi 2 is finally worth considering as an full-fledged educational computer (i.e., beyond the introductory toy stage).
With a newer monitor and the current generation raspberrypi, it should powered directly from the USB hub in the monitor. With a bolt through VESA mount, a wifi dongle and netbooting off an NFS, a rapidly deployable Raspberry Pi school lab should be easily doable.
Finding the perfect monitor (internal powered usb hub) for the right price point is difficult, the device that needs to get built is a VESA case for the raspberry pi that has a NEMA 5-15R input and AC pass through, a USB powersupply for the RaspPi and a power switch that turns both the rasp and the monitor off.
DC in is nice, could run the lab off batteries or direct solar for off grid installations.
The problem is the software configuration for the NFS bootserver and making the netboot images.
Someone should make a VM image that can netboot a cluster of Raspberry Pis with a choice of roles (scratch, web browsing, quake 3, etc). With remote mounted home directories (served from ZFS, for snapshots).
One modification I'd like to see for the raspberry pi is better sleep support. I don't know if the SoC could do it, but if it could go into extra low power mode, possibly powered by a supercap, it could wakeup on external events (like an RTC) and not take any power from the USB.
They did, with the B+ in mid 2014, and the current Pi 2 with the same power design. The B+ and newer boards don't suffer the odd power supply issues that the older boards (even the B rev2) suffered.
And I'm not just rehashing what someone else said; I've had one each of the original B, a rev 2 B, a B+, and now a Pi 2. I've used the same power supply on all four, and on the B+ and Pi 2 I don't have any issues with hotplugging flash drives and wifi adapters whereas I did on the original and rev 2 models.
I've had my B+ running 24/7 since August as a webcam server to watch my dog in the back yard, and I've only had to reboot it once for an update. It's running a Microsoft USB-powered 720p webcam and an Edimax wifi adapter directly off of the built in USB, and it hasn't once had a power issue. I've had my Pi 2 running 24/7 since I got it a couple of weeks ago, as a "light" GNU/Linux workstation I can switch to and use when my main workstation is otherwise occupied. Again, no power issues on that board.
This reflects my experience as well. Not only did the B+ add a switching power supply, but there is proper USB power protection and soft-start as well.
Unless GP is referring to the flash problem of the RPi 2.0, which is readily solved by using a case, piece of tape, or an epoxy blob (which I imagine is what will be added to the manufacturing line eventually)
Many DC devices have capacitors on their power rails. When they are plugged in, they generate a huge current spike as the capacitors charge up (limited only by the resistance and inductance of the capacitors/wires). This is enough to overwhelm the power supply and cause a reset.
The solution is a current limiter of some sort. Sometimes this is as simple as initially powering the USB port through a resistor, watching until the USB voltage gets high enough, then switching over to a direct connection.
First I've heard of this; it does need a decent USB power supply, but that's a consequence of not shipping one and expecting the user to supply one of suitable quality.
I found the first model would sometimes brownout when trying to maximally utilize the ethernet. Which was not a big deal for a hobby device, but it did eliminate a number of possibilities.
This has been one of the most amazingly non-intuitive things for me over the years. That operating a computer that is older can be so much more inefficient than operating one that is newer, that it isn't worth it. Literally the best thing you can do is crush the chips and mine the result for gold, silver, and the few rare earths that are left over. That at least puts a finite limit on the energy consumed over it, and the value returned from it.
Not sending it to places like the e-waste dump in Agbogbloshie, Accra, Ghana is a benefit. I'm not sure how to weight each thing - the increased CO2 emmissions are bad; not poisoning poor people who do things like burn the PVC insulation off cables to get the copper is a good thing.
Certainly agree with that sentiment! We are getting to the point where it makes sense to have 'disassembly' robots, this paper (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967066108...) looked at that (it wasn't the focus per se but an example). I can clearly see that 'anti-factories' where raw materials are recovered and unrecoverable materials made inert will be a thing.
Still, the market isn't going to solve this on it's own. Other peoples children are going to be cheaper than robots for the foreseeable future. In fact, poisoning the local population could be considered a minor issue compared to contaminating the water tables. Sick people die, but a contaminated water table keeps killing people for generations.
I think strong local regulations, as well as an emphasis of recycling locally is the best short-term solution. It does expose the actual cost of recycling (safely) -- but also cuts energy to shipping, and can be used as a stimuli for a more re-cycle friendly value chain (eg: make sellers of electronics take the bill for recycling, and demand local, safe recycling) -- which in turn puts pressure on suppliers to deliver items that are cheaper to recycle safely.
We may have sufficient regulations that the market can push it over the top. After all if you can create a facility that converts ewaste into resalable raw materials you can both sell the service to municipalities who are required by law to dispose of their ewaste safely, and the raw materials to manufacturers as a recycled product. That combination might get you into an internal rate of return to make it worth while.
The real challenge is the globalization (and accompanying fragmentation of regulation) of electronics production. One might recycle heavy metals locally, but you'd have to get it back into the production pipe-line -- which generally means shipping it to China. And being able to compete on price with heavy metals from various more-or less horribly run mines around the world. One obvious alternative is to produce electronic components locally (again). But realistically, doing that cheaply enough (and well enough) is going to be a challenge.
In this sense I think Tesla is a very interesting company (even if I don't think much of the cars themselves, from an eco-perspective -- cars is a horrible means of transportation, even electric ones).
If we had halfway-usable power management back in the day, it would have a lot more sense (for occasional use) as it would be idle/sleeping most of the day.
But we most certainly didn't, especially in Linux - and most people ended up having to leave them on. Heck, even the super pimped-out Linux machine I made in 2012 still has occasional issues with suspend/resume (I could probably go on a week long patch fest to try to fix it, but no thanks - I bought a macbook instead :)
Though it clearly isn't a server farm, there would appear to be reasonable use cases in the consumer and small business markets.
Lowest first cost is a significant form of capital efficiency [as opposed to energy]. There are tradeoffs either way, and for a single moderate use computer reaching the break-even point via reduced energy footprint could easily be several years. The raw cost of running the most power hungry P4 [115w] is $151 per 24/7 year @ full load @ $0.15/kwH.
In addition, having the machine pre-loaded with Linux also offers time efficiency versus re-provisioning a new Windows machine with Ubuntu or shopping for components, etc.
None of which to say it's a good deal per FLOP or MIP or anything else. But it's not necessarily bad either.
Heh, where they might make sense is in old apartments in northern Europe. My ancient building in Dublin uses resistive electric heat (about the worst kind of heating you can have unless you have abundant renewable energy). Really, I suppose I might as well be very slowly mining bitcoins or running servers instead of just getting no work at all for the heat I'm making.
Core 2 Duos and Pentium Dual Cores under 3ghz are fairly energy efficient chips (~65w) and they use Speedstep, etc to keep power consumption low at idle.
Of course newer dual cores and more modern chipsets will use less power overall, although for less demanding uses (web, word processing) I'm not sure if there would be a huge difference.
I agree, this is a dreadful idea. The CPUs are going to hog a whole load of energy (as are the motherboards). The HDDs are going to be seriously used and probably prone to complete breakdown.
An ARM SoC would do this same job much faster probably at much less cost, with FAR less energy consumption.
I agree, I love the concept, but you also have to add the cost of a monitor + keyboard + mouse AND the fact that everybody wants (needs?) a laptop these days.
"you also have to add the cost of a monitor + keyboard + mouse AND the fact that everybody wants (needs?) a laptop these days."
Not really...
with RDP/SSH/Telnet/etc, you can access this without the need a dedicated keyboard/mouse/monitor.
Also, I can live without a laptop due to my "phablet". I already have a desktop. Something like this would be a good for hiding a server (or two) somewhere.
The question is... the energy saved by reusing this. The energy saved by not destroying this. The landfill space not taken up by this...
Is it enough to offset the energy savings on newer pc's that are more powerful but use less energy? What is the tipping point that makes a new machine better?
That depends. If they happen to heat a small area around the user, then it will allow the ambient room to be at a lower temperature overall, leading to a net power savings because (counterintuitively) of lower efficiency.
There are a number of factors influencing that conclusion. Many people opined on this issue a little while ago, "heating people rather than spaces" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9034678
Could be. I'm just observing that there is a law of conservation of energy and that heat can be useful, so the question of using old computers in terms of environmental impact is not as clear cut as many internet comments suggest.
That's what makes the eco pitch interesting - they're reducing e-waste, which is good, but energy efficiency on newer boxes (especially if you just need minimal performance) is worlds better than what these are offering. On the one hand, the recycling is great, but on the other hand, it's like putting a 1953 Chevy back on the road - sure, we didn't have to manufacture another one, but it still might not be the best thing for the environment.