[jkot]

I am concerned with energy consumption of this device. Pentium 4 class computer consumes 40 watts while idle. ARM cpu would work just as fine (Ubuntu).

I think this devices should not be called green, unless they disclose power efficiency rating.

[midnightclubbed]

I was thinking the same thing. The increased power usage (over something like an ARM based Chromebook) is probably easily offset by the power needed to manufacture new but from a cost perspective to the user it may be a false-economy (assuming the machines are in use 24/7).

You also have the power consumption of the VGA monitor to contend with.

Are they remanufacturing in the USA?

[jkot]

> over something like an ARM based Chromebook) is probably easily offset by the power needed to manufacture

I doubt it. Manufactoring cost for ARM SOC is $10, this thing burns it in a month.

[john61]

He is talking about power not cost to build it.

[polshaw]

This guy is (pretty much) right. Firstly it's energy not power (power is more like the rate of flow of energy).. The embodied energy of a PC (ie, energy required to make it) is huge.

>life cycle energy use of a computer is dominated by production (83%) as opposed to operation (17%). The yearly life cycle cost of owning a computer is about 3,000 MJ/year, half again that of a refrigerator, a much larger appliance that uses far more electricity in operation. The short lifespan of computers and the variety of computing needs of users suggests that extension of lifespan, for example by promptly reselling to users who need less computing power, is a promising approach to mitigating environmental impacts.

This is from a study[1] from 2004 of a 1990 PC, inclusive of CRT... I suspect the figures are similar if not worse, as power consumption has come down a lot while chip sizes have remained similar... regardless, the point is so strong that it seems quite likely to remain true whatever the case -- unless your idea of a 'PC' is a rPI.2, which might be useful for some of the same scenarios, but certainly not all-- it's still far from the CPU power of a 2.8ghz p4. So, in many (most?) cases this is credibly a 'green' thing.

1. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=http%3A%2F%2...

[jkot]

But I am talking about something like RPi2 on higher frequency, more ram and small ssd. I bet it will run better than this archaic machine with P4. Faster memory transfer rate, SSD, proper video acceleration makes a huge difference. P4 had terrible chipsets

[cwyers]

Cost to build likely includes the cost of power, no? In other words, if building an ARM SoC costs $10, the electricity cost in the ARM SoC is under $10, so if you save $10 in electricity by running the ARM SoC, then you've offset the cost of the energy used in manufacturing.

[john61]

Energy is dirt cheap in comparison to labor. Therefore cost of industrial goods is correlated to labor not to energy / power costs. (with few exceptions in heavy industries.)

[smeyer]

That is not the point of the comment to which you're replying. They didn't claim that the purchase price provides a good estimate of the energy cost, but that it provides a strict upper bound. If the manufacturer is not selling at a loss, then they can't sell for less than their energy costs, let alone labor costs.

[brudgers]

There might as well be a book called "Fifty Shades of Green". The embodied energy of a product includes the amortization of the industrial infrastructure to produce it, to sustain the workers involved in its production, and that consumed by the logistics entailed in its acquisition.

In a model using solely exchange values, it is practical to cast fungible money directly into energy and thus treat the price of a physical good as roughly equivalent to its embodied energy. [it's a plausibly reasonable first approximation].

Again to a first approximation and absent detailed figures we're unlikely to obtain easily, we could say that the $300 ARM desktop carries $210 of additional embodied energy compared with the $90 recycled machine. That's about four years of a Pentium 4 idling 24/7. This assumes that an ARM consumes zero power at idle and that no energy is consumed in the disposal of a P4.

[jkot]

There are comparable ARM desktops for $100

[narrator]

40 watts while idle = 28.8 kwh a month so 13.5 cents per kwh = $3.88 / month to run. Rasberry Pi B+ uses 1.21 watts while idle so about 11 cents /month. So a Rasberry Pi will pay for itself in about 10 months.

[mark-r]

Given that the Raspberry Pi costs half as much to start, even adding a case, you're ahead on day 1.

[narrator]

Throw in a used 19" LCD that uses 32w (<$30 on ebay) and you're still ahead.

[vacri]

... assuming the target audience of schools, non-profits, and call-centers leave them on 24/7.

[tbob22]

I'm not sure why they even considered P4's, the pre-prescott P4's don't even have Speedstep. That means they run full voltage/speed all the time which is terribly inefficient.

Core 2 Duos are much more energy efficient, they are not in short supply by any means and cost about the same used ($2-3).

[e12e]

Well, ship them North (South) - somewhere with electric heating (regulated by a thermostat). Then the 40 watts become a non-issue. Anywhere you need air-conditioning, things are a bit different.