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Or when an old iPhone or Android is sitting in a cabinet getting dust, while it can be used as a webcam, small home server, automation device, clock (I use an old iPad), etc.
I think so much compute power is being wasted and I'm not sure how to feel about that.
So many underpowered devices are produced that sit in drawers, collect dust, and end up in the landfill. For instance Intel makes "atom" devices that if they don't die early because of design flaws, they die early because they aren't really useful. There was a time when Intel was interested in having you buy a new computer because it was the best computer you ever had, now they are interested in putting every vendor of parts out of business (except seemingly Synaptics) so they can get more of the BOM, even if this means the new computer you buy will be the worst computer you ever bought.
If there was some minimum standard of quality for devices, people wouldn't need to buy so many.
No. My devices are rarely utilizing over 40% CPU and tend to last for a very long time. I know it isn't much but this helps keep some gear out of the landfill. I can always find a use for older hardware. This Linux PC I am writing this post on is coming up on 12 years old and is more than adequate for my purposes. I expect it to last at least another 10 years, though I may have to replace the spinning rust with an SSD at some point.
I recently bought my first smart phone despite not really needing one. I have mixed thoughts on how long this will last since I do not control the firmware yet. These devices are designed to be difficult to service. I will probably turn it into a glorified MP3 player since it has a large battery and just get the Caterpillar flip phone. I think the smart phone would be a great home audio entertainment system. I can not find a logical reason to push it to the extreme.
Do you feel bad when devices aren't utilized to the extreme? No. My devices are rarely utilizing over 40% CPU and tend to last for a very long time. I know it isn't much but this helps keep some gear out of the landfill. I can always find a use for older hardware. This Linux PC I am writing this post on is coming up on 12 years old and is more than adequate for my purposes. I expect it to last at least another 10 yea…
Do you feel bad when devices aren't utilized to the extreme? No. My devices are rarely utilizing over 40% CPU and tend to last for a very long time. I know it isn't much but this helps keep some gear out of the landfill. I can always find a use for older hardware. This Linux PC I am writing this post on is coming up on 12 years old and is more than adequate for my purposes. I expect it to last at least another 10 yea…
You're still booting off HDD? That's pretty wild.
smartctl -a /dev/sda | grep ^Model
Model Family: Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 (AF)
On the other hand I'm not super frugal to the point where I'm on a eight year old phone to never waste a cpu cycle or something.
e.g. I own a few high powered workstations for fluid dynamics computations. If energy was free, I would be just running 'what-if' solves all the time just for the hell of it. But because energy isn't free, they stay in sleep unless I need them for what is deemed 'necessary' for research.