VIA Carbon Free Computing - back it or copy it but don't knock it!

[Bob Crabtree]

HEXUS.lifestyle editor Bob Crabtree puts aside his green-tinted eyeshades and goes green all over to applaud VIA's attempts to promote the use of low-energy computers, even as he criticises the choice of wording and the confusion that may result.

"The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, was the highly-appropriate setting yesterday for a media event promoting VIA's world-wide computing initiative to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

At the event, two UK-produced low-energy PCs were introduced. One, the Carbon 3, is from Evesham and due in the coming months; the other, actually a range of models, is from quiet-system specialist Tranquil PC and has been available for a little while.

Rather less appropriately, both PCs, like the initiative, carry the confusing and virtually meaningless label, 'Carbon Free'."

More in this HEXUS.opinion.

[awm]

While reducing power consuption is clearly a good thing VIA's ideas is complete marketing BS. If they really cared about the enviroment they would try to find more envirometnaly friendly ways to manufacture chips (a process which uses a list of chemicals that looks like a who's-who of toxicity). I think for any enviromental change to be successful it needs to come from the people not from the selfish corporations who will make up any stunt they think will help sales, be it empahzing raw clock speed or low power usage. Personally I think rules like RoHS are more effictive since they are made by people who don't have a financial interest in selling hazardous substances(at least in theory).

[MrP]

lets be honest at least via are doing something towards the enviroment.

their processors are smaller than intels or AMD's and use less electricity. so you have an efficent processor and they get more processors per wafer thus reducing the enviromental impact per processor.

i'm with bob, more power to them

[Gunbuster]

Its nice to see Power to Watt improving these days in CPUs, now if only Nvidia or ATi would catch on. I would also imagine Hybrid FD/HDs also consume less along with using reusable usb flash drives versus CD-R/DVD-Rs.

I have a feeling this topic would make a good Hexus article.

[awm]

lets be honest at least via are doing something towards the enviroment.

Via is doing something for their bottom line, which happens to intersect with enviromental protection. I'm not saying enviriomentaly friendly (less unfriendly) computers are a bad thing, just that Via doesn't care about the enviroment, it just happens to insersect their path.

I definitly agree with that the Power/W imporovements are great, and seconded on the GPU efficency. Hopefully we can go back to the good old days when computers were next to silent since they didn't have a bunch of heating elements in them.

[Funkstar]

My PC i build recently is quieter than any other i've ever owned. Power/W is probably the best too.

Companies are money making machines, thats what they do. Especially if they are publicly traded companies. Companies that are moved to produce more socially and environmentally responsible products because it is better for their bottom line is far better than being forced to by legislation (as this means extra expense for the government to impliment).

[badass]

While reducing power consuption is clearly a good thing VIA's ideas is complete marketing BS. If they really cared about the enviroment they would try to find more envirometnaly friendly ways to manufacture chips (a process which uses a list of chemicals that looks like a who's-who of toxicity). I think for any enviromental change to be successful it needs to come from the people not from the selfish corporations who will make up any stunt they think will help sales, be it empahzing raw clock speed or low power usage. Personally I think rules like RoHS are more effictive since they are made by people who don't have a financial interest in selling hazardous substances(at least in theory).

My thoughts exactily. This obsession with Carbon our society cuerrently has is BS.

[awm]

I think the problem is consumers only look at enviromental (and socio-ethical) issues once the product reaches them and not before.