It's smaller, but not actually negligible. An old but oft-cited 2002 study said a laptop with a three year lifecycle took about twice the energy to manufacture as operate. Silicon is much more energy intensive than other materials, with fab energy consumption apparently relatively steady over time on the order of 1 kwh/cm^2 of silicon processed.

So, there is a high bar for replacing a computer with a new one to actually save net resources, but an actual 10x reduction in power consumption like replacing a P4 desktop with an RPi is big enough to pay off reasonably quickly.

Quite interesting, thank you!

I am even more interested in how the formula works out if you buy one professional laptop (say, Lenovo X13) with a Ryzen CPU -- because they consume less power -- and I am looking forward to reading such an analysis sometime in the future.

Interesting - thanks for providing data to contrast with my hunch!

There are ALSO a lot of old cell phones and raspberry Pis and things around. These computers use very little power and are still quite capable. There's NOTHING preventing them from being useful for a wide range of tasks except for software bloat, or closed platforms. It would not be hard conceptually to build computers to prioritize power consumption, it's simply just not a priority.

I would love to see and use such machines but as you said, the software isn't there. Sadly nobody is paying to write or improve it.

True, but as I said in another sibling comment -- the machines get manufactured anyway (since the production capacity is mostly optimized around the needs of big customers) so I might as well get a much greener machine now and hold on to it for 10+ years because I will burn less CO2 while I am using it.

That logic makes the "re-use" part of "reduce, re-use, recycle" redundant. You're part of a society that, when acting roughly in tandem, can make large-scale chages. If everyone followed your logic nothing would ever change and, if I'm honest, it sounds more like a rationalisation for indulging in new tech (an impulse which I share!)

I believe you're frustrated with the world's stance towards ecology -- for good reason. I am too. Almost nobody who can make a true difference gives a f_ck. But I am looking at it historically and holistically while you seem to want to argue theoreticals that don't have basis in our current reality.

Let me be 100% clear here: I am sharing your stance in general but there are complications I am forced to consider and act accordingly with:

- Software gets slower with time, so I have to upgrade. Me upgrading only once 7-8 years is, I think, a fairly heroic effort on my side. I've seen businesses that blindly upgrade everyone's laptops every 3 years, zero questions asked.

- You and I have no recourse whatsoever against the big players who make disposable tech. You think I don't want them fined all the way to bankruptcy and even jail? I would love that. But we can't make it happen.

- My "logic" is simply of a family man with a ton of responsibilities and a pretty demanding job. Please don't make me the villain because I am doing my very best just to function and have a few precious relaxing hours per day. Most of the common folk will never be willing to sacrifice the little "me time" they have just so they free some ecological bandwidth... which will be quickly consumed and re-balanced (in the wrong direction) by those who create huge and environmentally disastrous manufacturing facilities.

- I love to indulge in a new tech but I have mostly tamed this wrong impulse. Doesn't mean I have to hold on to inadequate machines until they fall apart in my hands however.

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Again, I get where you are coming from but please don't vent on me for doing the best that I can without sacrificing all the comfort and free time that I already don't have much of.

There are much bigger villains out there that deserve your frustration more than I do.

I'm sorry that came across as a vent - it certainly wasn't intended that way. I'm not trying to make you the villain, I'm trying to gently point out that the logic you're using on the surface would excuse a lot of people just not trying. Now you've expanded on that I agree with much of what you say - everyone needs to take things at the page they can handle - and my life sounds similar to yours, so I totally get the lack of bandwidth.

There's a podcast that my wife listens to quite a bit call Outrage and Optimism about the climate crisis, and it's essentially my approach - I am angry about the lack of leadership by governments, but I also feel like people need to be optimistic about what we can achieve together, including pushing governments to act.

I took part in the initial Extinction rebellion protest in London, and although I don't think it achieved much in immediate concrete terms, and I feel like the organisation is going backwards now, I do think it galvanized a lot of people into believing there are enough people out there who want meaningful action that speaking up is worth it. I was handing out leaflets to people from all walks of life - from a guy in a sharp business suit to a local building foreman who runs a vegan group - and only got one person out of hundreds who thought it was pointless. Most were actively enthusiastic and felt glad that there were lots of other people who shared their concerns.

Yeah, I don't disagree with you at all. Truth is, people would use anything that sounds like logic to them to excuse themselves from not helping even a little. Sad fact of life.

It's really cool that spreading awareness works! I just wish we collectively as a civilization finally move to the next stage after it because ever since I exist (I am 41 y/o) people were mostly only spreading awareness. Guess I am getting old and jaded because I'd like to see some action on these extremely important topics one day.

I would add that it's okay (or, at minimum, better) to recognize that you personally upgrade more often than you should, while also realizing we should maintain support for older hardware so everyone else isn't also forced to upgrade too often.

Agreed on that. People who can't upgrade often shouldn't be ignored. Slack and Teams should work non-intrusively on laptops with 4GB of RAM.

Teams doesn't consistently work well on my machine with 64GB of RAM, so it's not simply a memory problem. Slack I've for some reason never had a problem with, even on a laptop with 4 GB of RAM. But to be fair I'm only on a handful of fairly low volume slack channels.

You save more (money and ressources) by not buying a new engine.

You assume that my goal is to spend the absolute minimum sum on tech over my entire life.

That's not it. My goal is to spend the minimum realistic sum for tech that enables me to do my job well and long-term so I am financially free and help the businesses that hire me, and keep improving my craft (for which I have love ever since a pre-teen).

That doesn't equal holding on to a MacBook Pro 2012 until 2030. It equals keeping an old machine around to check if the code in the final version of my current PR is well-optimized -- but I work on a much stronger machine because stuff like LSP and re-running tests is crucial for productivity. And we all know that most dev tooling is generally extremely demanding.