semi-green computing

[S P Arif Sahari Wibowo]

On Wed, 18 Feb 2009, Zbigniew Koziol wrote:
> S P Arif Sahari Wibowo wrote:
>> I am wondering whether it is not more energy efficient to 
>> have a couple of less powerful low powered laptop / netbooks 
>> with no moving part?
> Newer processors tend to have better performance normalized by 
> their power consumption.

Not sure what that have to do with using laptop / netbooks. The 
laptop / netbooks will also be new, and laptop / netbooks are 
design to be energy efficient (since it should be able to run as 
much as possible from battery), for example by having no moving 
part (e.g. hard drive).

> I bet that using electricity provided from power plant is much 
> more energy efficient than creating electricity from food we 
> are eating by our organism ;)

Do you really want to bet? :-) While the energy from power plant 
is something need to be produced, the energy to operate to pedal 
probably come from excess energy (something we already eat for, 
will go to fat or we need to exercise it out anyway), so 
effectively zero input. Anyway, just to express how low the 
energy requirement of this machines.

>> Other thing to think about is the power requirement and waste 
>> to manufacture the computer and to throw away old computers. 
>> Wouldn't it probably more green to get a couple of old 
>> servers, keeping them from being thrown away, eventhough they 
>> use more power?

Maybe your previous reply about performance per energy is to 
answer this? Keep in mind that the power required to manufacture 
a computer system can easily multiple times the power required 
to run the computer for a year. And the waste is many times the 
weight of the final computer system.

I am thinking if you got an used 2Ghz machine, ran it at 1GHz 
with 25% reduced core voltage, the machine will run pretty cool 
and with very little excess heat.

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                              (stephan paul) Arif Sahari Wibowo
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