<ignasilucas@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Don't forget to take power consumption into consideration for
>> budgetary and/or environmental concerns, though. Old PIV desktops will
>> probably suck a lot of power to give you the same performance as that
>> Android tablet, plus the power to run a monitor. (And the expense of a
>> monitor; unless explicitly expressed, I doubt those LOTS come with
>> display devices.)
>
> About environmental concerns, I would say that reusing old stuff that
> would otherwise be trash, saves many more CO2 emissions than what is
> needed to build a new machine. At least, that's the case for cars.
>
> http://www.letra.org/spip/article.php?id_article=3567
That is a good point, and part of the reason I continue to spend my
time refreshing (Linuxizing, for one) and giving away old computers to
people who need computers.
In an institutional setting, though, if there are going to be a lot of
them, and particularly if they're intended to be left on, it's worth
noting the power consumption difference. The reliability can also be
an issue—presenting you with a time vs. money balancing
act—particularly if they'd be used in mission-critical ways, and
particularly if you don't have much time to spend troubleshooting and
replacing dying machines.
We took some of our old computers (Interestingly, Optiplex GX260s,
like the ones in that auction), and built Linux-based card catalog
computers for our libraries (they just bought up to OpenBox, or
something, and run Firefox in full-screen mode on the card catalog
website). Hey, we thought, we'd be getting some extra miles out of
machines that are too slow to use on desks or in labs, and it's not
like it's mission-critical so if they die from time to time, who
cares?
The librarians loved them, and they worked beautifully...most of the
time. The only problem with these machines were that they *became*
mission-critical, and the librarians started expecting these things up
and running all the time. But...sometimes the hard disk would die...or
the processor fan would go haywire...or it would just mysteriously
stop wanting to get through POST: in short, they were behaving like
old, dying computers. While we had plenty of backup parts to keep
fixing them, it kept taking our time (and sometimes in response to
great urgency on the librarian's behalf) to maintain them, not to
mention gas driving to the other campus, etc.
We decided to replace them, and bought three new tiny form factor
boxes (pretty much netbook motherboards crammed into aluminum shells)
that could be VESA mounted onto the back of some LCD monitors we
already had. For one thing, they only consume in the neighborhood of
12 watts, maybe 10% of what the old computers pulled. For another,
they're entirely solid-state (well, we bought solid state drives for
them, so now they are), and so with no moving parts, and the entire
back side of the thing as a heat sink, they're silent and cool. Also,
the card catalog station—unless you peek behind it—just like an LCD
monitor with a keyboard and mouse connected to it; the actual computer
part of it has no desk footprint.
For lagniappe, I'm still trying to train the librarians to "just
reboot the thing; if it doesn't work again, leave it alone for a while
and try rebooting it again later", a phrase which would have saved
them every single support call relating to those things since we put
them in.
Just a story; call it a cautionary tale.
Simón
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