UK Greens Declare Vista Bad For Environment 290
schwaang writes "The UK Green Party says that Vista's DRM requirements will force many unnecessary hardware upgrades. Quoting: 'There will be thousands of tonnes of dumped monitors, video cards, and whole computers that are perfectly capable of running Vista — except for the fact they lack the paranoid lock down mechanisms Vista forces you to use. That's an offensive cost to the environment. Future archaeologists will be able to identify a "Vista Upgrade Layer" when they go through our landfill sites.'"
Am I missing something? (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, DRM sucks. But DRM is no excuse to just start making up FUD. Vista is a hog, but blaming it all on DRM seems pretty inaccurate. Saying that everyone is going to start filling landfills just because their video card doesn't support HDCP seems like it's crossing over into "deliberately lying".
stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Gates' probable response (Score:1, Insightful)
oh please (Score:4, Insightful)
Number of people wo will buy Vista retail - tiny
Number of people who will upgrade an old PC just to run Vista that they just bought - tinier
Number of people upgrading who will toss out perfectly good vid cards/monitors rather than building a secondary PC - all 3 of you.
Old News... (Score:2, Insightful)
Vista defaults to Standby, not Power off! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:oh please (Score:3, Insightful)
Already a lot of them prefer purchasing a new machine instead of paying a sizable part of the price to have it "repaired" by removing spyware.
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:1, Insightful)
While I agree, pro-DRM and anti-DRM groups have been using it to make up FUD on both sides for awhile now
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt that a two year old laptop will have a Blu-Ray drive, so no, I don't think it would be able to play one. People will have to upgrade to enjoy such things, but this has nothing to do with Vista.
Yes, I would tend to agree, but I don't think this has anything to do with the features in Vista or any other OS for that matter. It is the content producers choice to use DRM on their content and they are rightfully to blame for it.
FUD (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Strange... (Score:3, Insightful)
Vista runs fine on it. The "experience" score was a bit low, but everything worked fine.
People who want the latest and greatest whiz-bang crap may need to upgrade, but those people are the type who drop $3k on a gaming rig every few years anyway and secretly are looking for an excuse.
Is there a chance that the uninformed will be taken advantage of by the likes of Best Buy to buy things they don't need? Of course, but Best Buy does that even without the excuse of Vista.
Vista is 5 years more advanced than XP. Of course it needs more resources. Go compare what a Linux system typically would install nicely on in 1998 and 2003, or worse 1994 and 1999. I ran Linux on 8 meg systems for 4-5 years, now most installers won't even load in a system with less than 64 meg.
What a load of rubbish. (Score:5, Insightful)
Far and away the vast majority of PC users will be sticking with their current XP install until they buy a new PC, which will come pre-loaded with Vista. And even then, people don't tend to throw away their old PCs if they still work. They tend to keep it around as a second machine, or pass it on to a relative (instant recycling).
I hate DRM as much as the next Slashbot, but come on. Thousand of people dumping perfectly good hardware so they can watch HD-DVD movies? I don't think so.
Get Serious (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How many dgrees (Score:4, Insightful)
I've never quite understood all of the concern about monitors and lead. Almost all of that lead is vitrified in the glass, just the same way that leaded crystal drinking glasses are chock full of lead. If the lead is immobilized enough to drink out of, it wouldn't seem that monitor glass would pose a major threat.
Moreover, monitors would generally end up in a landfill with some kind of containment system. People fret about the 5 pounds of lead frozen in glass and buried in a landfill, yet anybody can go down to Wal-Mart, plop down a couple of bucks for a pound of lead airgun pellets, and indiscriminately scatter them around the environment. Why no comparable outcry about that?
The Real Environmental Issue (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of folks like being able to upgrade only what's needed on their system. Vista is just making it so you'll need to upgrade stuff for the sake of getting their DRM shit working. Even if your system is already capable of doing all the whiz-bang stuff.
Fuck it. I've been using Win2k/Ubuntu and have yet to have a reason to install XP. I doubt I'll feel the need to move to Vista. I'll just drop Win2k when things stop supporting it. Why should I drop $200 for something that'll require me to drop another $1000 for no new functionality?
Re:Sure (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is the content producers choice to use DRM on their content and they are rightfully to blame for it.
I won't argue with blaming the content producers for DRM. But they aren't the ones who are paying for it. The people who buy Vista are paying for it— through the additional monetary costs of the hardware needed solely for the Premium Content pipes, and through the obligatory CPU overhead of running the processes that assure the OS that you haven't sneaked any non-DRM hardware onto the machine in the last few milliseconds.
The people who buy Vista are paying for all this even if the box will never be used for Premium Content. Even if the only thing they will ever do is run spreadsheets, word processing, Blender, and Tetris— they will stay pay to protect DRM Content Providers from the possibility that a copyright might be infringed on in their box.
Vista is a great way to spend a lot more money on a new box that will give you marginally better performance on the job than your old WinXP box. If you think that the appropriate design goal of an OS is to provide the user with the most cost effective means of utilizing cost effective hardware to get his computing tasks done, then Vista is "defective by design".
Computer-related activites already spoil the envir (Score:3, Insightful)
I still don't see why the world is going to rush out and buy Vista. I wouldn't recommend to ANY of my customers to even consider upgrading for a minimum of six months because there is going to be quite the bug-fest with Vista 1.0. Besides, what's the real upside over XP? Security? Ha!
How about donating the old PCs? (Score:2, Insightful)
Not that I agree that so many people will suddenly dispose of their old computers, but if that were the case, why not establish some incentives for donating them instead of throwing them away? Give the original owner a free/discounted copy of Vista Home Basic or a free/discounted hardware upgrade (RAM/Monitor/Larger HDD/etc...) with the purchase of a new Vista-ready machine if they ship their old PC in (sort-of like replacing a car battery - you get the discount/refund when they get the old battery).
Think about it - if that were the case, companies like Dell and HP could possibly work with an institution (be it academic, charitable, or whatever) to start a ODPC (one desktop per child) project, where old PCs that would otherwise be completely trashed would be reformatted, have a free OS installed, and then sold at a very low price for similar uses as the OLPC machines. Granted, there's no spiffy hand-crank, but you have to admit it would have its benefits for education! Kids could still learn to type using these computers.
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:3, Insightful)
Your monitor is an aging 17 to 19 inch 4:3 display. Your monitor is a power hungry fifty pound glass bottle. Which will in not so very distant future be making the trip to the dumpster anyway.
Tell me that there is anything which will hold you back when the big screen HDCP monitor become mass market.
Re:Linux is bad for it too (Score:2, Insightful)
And that's green-friendly, 100 computers draining at least 60W, doing the same work as a single computer using 400W could do.