Keep Your Computer Alive!

Geeks have a leg up on normal enviros. While many greens are irrationally afraid of the contents of their computer, EcoGeeks can do things to keep their computers alive.

Extending the life of your PC is an important part of being an EcoGeek because, according to life cycle analysis, computers actually consume more energy while they're being created than the do over their lifetimes.

In this article from Pramnos, you can check out a ton of ways to keep your computer chugging along as a functional beast long after Michael Dell would have you believe it's 100% obsolete. The trick, really, is using open source operating systems, generally Linux, that are designed to work on older machines.

Turn it into a thin client, a media storage center, or a basic workstation...all terribly easy with this guide.

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Puppy Linux
written by weee recycling, October 10, 2007

is one of the best ways to keep old computers giving useful service.
Early Pentium computer running Puppy is faster tha a new(ish) dual core running XP for many apps!
It's also an easy route/user friendly route to Linux.

carefully...
written by David, October 10, 2007

That's a challenging statistic you've posted there, about energy consumed during production, and I'd love to know more about it. I recently replaced my Mac G4 server with a Mac Mini server. I cut power consumption by more than half - power that's consumed all day, every day. Many old computers are fantastically inefficient (the old Mac consumed over ten watts when it was turned off, due to a funky power supply). Keeping them around an extra five or ten years may or may not be doing anyone a favour.

Broken Links?
written by Amelia, October 14, 2007

I wanted to go to both of the places linked to in the article, but all it said is that it "cannot display the webpage"... the site may be down or something, but I just thought I would bring this to attention.

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