The Ndiyo Blog

Interesting BBC report about consumer sensitivity to the environmental cost of PC-based computing. Excerpt:

Consumers are willing to pay up to an extra £108 ($197) for a PC containing fewer chemicals, a survey has found.
People also feel manufacturers should take responsibility for the disposal of old machines, the research shows.

So-called e-waste is a growing global problem, with 30 million PCs being dumped each year in the US alone.

The study by Ipsos-Mori for Greenpeace coincides with an announcement by PC maker Dell to phase out a number of toxic chemicals in its products.

The nine-nation research found that UK computer users were willing to pay an extra £64 ($117), while people in China were prepared for spend up to £108 ($197) for a more environmentally sound PC.

HAZARDOUS WASTE

1: Lead in cathode ray tube and solder
2: Arsenic in older cathode ray tubes
3: Selenium in circuit boards as power supply rectifier
4: Polybrominated flame retardants in plastic casings, cables and circuit boards
5: Antimony trioxide as flame retardant
6: Cadmium in circuit boards and semiconductors
7: Chromium in steel as corrosion protection
8: Cobalt in steel for structure and magnetivity
9: Mercury in switches and housing

A report published by the UN University in 2004 said making the average PC required 10 times the weight of the machine in chemicals and fossil fuels.

The study also found that the short life of computer equipment was leading to a mountain of toxic waste, mainly in India and China.

Electronic waste, or e-waste, is a massive global problem. Thirty million computers are thrown out every year in the US alone.

About 70% of heavy metals, such as lead and mercury, in landfill sites come from e-waste.

Hmmm.. Not sure I believe these figures, but if consumers really were willing to pay an extra £100 for greener computing, they might be interested in a thin client which gave them an entire workstation for about the same amount.

[Link]

Microsoft recently announced their FlexGo plan. The idea is that those who can’t afford a PC can pay half of the cost up front and the remainder using prepaid cards which allow you to use the machine. When you’ve bought 800 hours-worth of computing time, the PC is all yours. This is a very interesting model, and, of course, something similar has revolutionised the use of mobile phones around the world, something the FlexGo web site is keen to point out.

We should be careful, though, about applying that analogy too liberally. There are two separate issues in the mobile phone world. The first is that the hardware is quite expensive, and so service providers subsidise it and then recover the cost through the ongoing service charges. The second is that a regular monthly contract is not attractive for many people and so the pay-as-you go option gives them flexibility of payment, in return for even higher service charges.

The important difference with PCs is that there aren’t normally any service charges. (Except, of course, those paid to Microsoft for updates to their software, and those paid to virus-checking companies to deal with the inadequacies of that software.) A large part of the world doesn’t even pay Microsoft for the software it uses, due to widespread piracy. So this is a finance scheme with hardware enforcement, which has to absorb the risk of non-repayment and so will actually increase the cost of a PC to those who currently have trouble affording it in the first place, but will make them legitimate Microsoft licensees.

Despite that, I welcome the scheme, as I do all incentives to help the less-wealthy get access to the digital world. It will no doubt work well for many people. But we should recognise it for what it is. Remember, if you buy a PC with Linux on it, you pay less than if you buy one with a proprietary operating system - under this scheme, you pay more.

With Linux, there are no service charges - you don’t have to pay anything more for upgrades. It’s almost as if you are buying a cellphone without having to involve a service provider. But you can still use the phone!. As much as you like. Immediately. What we’re trying to do is to make the most of that fact, and at the same time come up with ways to make the ‘phone’ cheaper.

Those of you interested in the world of Open Source should enjoy FLOSS Weekly, a relatively new podcast from Leo Laporte, Chris DiBona and friends. They have extended informal interviews with the key people behind such projects as Firefox, Wikipedia and Gnome. Recommended.

FLOSS, for anyone wondering about the name, stands for Free/Libre and Open Source Software.