PC v Laptop ? Eco-friendly, Green & basic energy saving

Green and Mean
My PC in 'the office', a mass of technology and speed !

And the power needed. I am not proud

One Laptop, one 13amp Plug

Thinking Green in the Home Office

This is a more difficult one, especially for someone like me who uses their Computer a lot for more energy eating projects.

My PC uses are Typing (remember just that!), Digital Camera photo editing, Camcorder editing and burning DVD's, Webcam and Microphone for 'conferencing, listening to music as I work, watching the occasional Movie. Then there's my son who likes it now and again for his high graphic modern gaming etc.

All this needs more technology and higher specifications. It's either having a PC with all the gadgets or sitting there drinking 3 cups of Coffee whilst it loads some of these softwares up, then another 4 whilst you actually waiting for it to show on the screen.

Luckily, technology is racing, in fact it's racing so much that if you blink an eye, some new Operating System or higher speed graphics card has been introduced onto the market.

All this results in the Home Office almost sucking electricity into your Home thus making the Suppliers wealthy on your needs and demands (all flying the green flag at the same time of course!).

This summer, after a lot of thinking and weighing things up, mainly on the energy front, I decided to purchase a Laptop. The specifications are getting better and the prices are coming down. Therefore...

PC v Laptop
I use the PC now mainly for Camcorder editing and my son for his gaming. The PC takes five 13amp plugs to run at it's full potential.

For all other things and my website work, I now use the Laptop = one 13amp plug! It's got a prety good spec, although slightly slower than the main PC, but are we in that much of a rush!

The Laptop cost me slightly less than the main PC. The PC takes up half the bedroom. The laptop a small corner of the Kitchen Table.

The other reason I brought the Laptop was 'green and mean'. If I work on the main PC during the winter, I need the Heater on in the room, whereas with the Laptop I can sit at the Kitchen Table beside the Rayburn burning it's free collected wood and feel quite snug at the same time.

Researching around the Energy saving websites, there are variations of the amount of energy saved. These vary from Laptops using one tenth the electricity compared to a PC, down to one fifth.
Even one fifth adds up over a year and you've probably not only saved a bit of carbon footprint but saved yourself quite a lot of money at the same time!

By having a Home Network system, either Wireless or wired, you can share the information between computers. That's OK, but to do so, you need to have both on at the same time.
A good idea there is to transfer the information by a USB Flash Drive (which are as cheap as chips nowadays).
You then copy and paste things between the two. This also acts as a good back up system should one of the two computers suddenly go bang, which happened to me once!

So, if I were starting off again, or if I was just using computers without the need for gaming or high-end photo / camcorder editing, I'd certainly choose a Laptop!

I spent quite a while looking for the best suited Eco-friendly store to link to and after a while came accross Nigel's. It's a great place to visit, very reasonably priced and run by a sincerely green guy.
Click the logo below to go there.

Other Considerations
 Of course, the Home Office doesn't just stop at the Computer.
There are many other items such as Office Furniture, parer, pens, folders, lighting etc., which can all be purchased with your personal green environment in mind, many being Fair Trade and thus helping other people on this Planet to live a better life than they do now.

The thing about living in the fourth (is it?) wealthiest economy in the World is that we have become people to accept thing's as said.
A higher standard of living is expected now. 

Modern technology
Owes ecology
An apology.
~Alan M. Eddison

People in general expect to have the best and latest models of everything which Manufacturers really make their money on.
I'm not against people making money, but will we one day find we have everything we desire within the Home, but nothing to go outside to?

A margin of life is developed by Nature for all living things - including man. All life forms obey Nature's demands - except man, who has found ways of ignoring them. ~Eugene M. Poirot, Our Margin of Life, 1978
Stereos on standby cost £290m and produce 1.6 million tonnes of CO2
 VCRs and DVD cost £194m and produce 1.06 million tonnes of CO2
 TVs on standby cost £88m and produce 480,000 tonnes of CO2