You'll get down voted for it but its completely true. Anyone who thinks they are helping the environment by still using their ancient P4 instead of junking it is kidding themselves.
As if it costs no energy to make a new computer? If you want to minimize total energy costs, you have to consider manufacturing energy costs. The case for just getting a new computer gets even worse if you put all of your old computer's energy costs as a sunk cost. This study shows that amongst the early 2000s generation of laptops that even if you use a laptop for 7 years [1] (you have to squint at the first graph), manufacturing still accounts for ~50% of energy costs. Even assuming that manufacturing efficiency increased even more than operating efficiency since then, the answer is still not clear cut.
Now obviously at some point, it becomes better to get a new computer period, and most P4s may already be in that range, but as a generalized statement, should be taken carefully.
Pathetic, really. Whats so 'ancient' about a P4? Its still just as functional as it was the day it was minted - a manufacturing process that cost the earth a LOT in terms of resources. The carbon debt of producing last years computing devices is still huge, and that is all going to be thrown away and ignored because the "P4 isn't fast enough any more.."
So all those resources are going to be wasted just because its not 'fashionable' to have a slow computer any more?
I find this attitude disgusting. There is no such thing as a 'dead computer', only dead users. That P4 that someone finds 'uncool' could just as easily make a huge difference in someone else's life, it only it weren't sitting there in a huge pile of garbage, rotting away ..
