what is the most environmentally friendly laptop you can buy?

Kelly Craig wrote:I grew tired of wiping out the lettering on the keys in around six months, which required me to replace a lot of keyboards over the decades since my 286. I would have to look away from the board to find keys on those many occasions I only needed to strike a couple keys.  As such, I started looking around for boards like the old ones, with the lettering actually in and not just on the keys. That led me to the mechanicals.

For the same reason of occasionally needing to punch type, I look for backlit keys because I will often work at night without lights on. I think the "Thinklights" on Thinkpads are far inferior (and it broke on my brand new one within a few months) to true backlighting, which is why I prefer my Dell Latitude (also for the joystick nub in the home row).

When looking for a mechanical keyboard with backlighting for a PC, it is frustrating how much the gamers have warped the market here. A good mechanical keyboard or a membrane one with backlighting can be had for around $20. Combining the two starts running into the hundreds. And they all have multi-colored, super bright LEDs that need to put on a fireworks display for the buyer. I bought the most basic one I could find and programmed it to simply run steady blue lights dimly, but when I plug it into my laptop it sucks power faster than the CPU. I'm sure one with just two basic LEDs under the F and J (+ perhaps Ctrl, Tab, Enter, Backspace?) would be enough to orient on and use negligible power, but of course wouldn't look kuuuul enough to sell on Amazon...

Coydon Wallham wrote:
I think if you read back through the thread you will find most are concerned about the ability of the machines to provide a long service life. The energy used by a device is usually trivial compared to that used in manufacturing it's various parts, depending on the period of comparison. Computers also contain various parts that will not biodegrade and are more toxic than normal waste.

Gotcha. That's how I perceive our 20 year old vehicles. Not the most efficient but most of the environmental and labor costs were in them the day they rolled off the assembly line.  Buying a new 'efficient' vehicle would create all of those costs (and more in the case of EVs) again.
It's a difficult thing to measure though. Running an old old Pentium 5 or Athlon you found in a closet would avoid production costs of a new PC but unless you also need a space heater, maybe not the best choice. LOL (of course there are plenty of used laptops on ebay and govdeals.com has tons of Chromebooks that school districts are dumping)

Coydon Wallham wrote:
The fact that the Evolve will run Windows 10 fine but not an Ubuntu distro would be a flag to me that it probably includes various proprietary parts so will not work well with open source OSes. This means when Windows bloat renders it unuseable in a future release and Microsoft discontinues support for 10, it might as well be discarded, even if the parts hold up to the test of time.

I think you may have come to the wrong conclusion. Everything WORKS in Ubuntu. It is just a little laggier than Windows.  It might be happier with a lighter Linux distro like Mint.
Windows updates would render the little 64gb emmc useless pretty quickly. Windows 10 edu includes gpedit so I used it to turn off windows updates. I also turned off Windows defender realtime protection but that might be unwise for most depending on what you're doing with it.
Rather than installing apps on the main disk, I added the portableapps.com suite of apps to the m.2 disk. You can run these from a thumb drive (or the microSD card in this case) but I often run them directly on a PC/laptop just because they tend to be lightweight, only run when you want them to, and you can control when they all get updated from one spot.  Many of the apps you already use are in there. Libreoffice, VLC, FileZilla, GIMP, Blender, 7zip, Chrome, Firefox, etc.
This laptop even runs ultimaker cura reasonably well! (3d printing slicer)

Coydon Wallham wrote:
For someone on a budget in an off grid situation, that sure is one hell of a bargain though...

True. I travel to an off grid location often and having a laptop that can run directly from DC without any inverter is nice.  But I think this laptop would be good for anyone who is travelling light.

The laptop is small and lightweight. Feels sturdy enough for its weight. Has 4 cores, usb 3, a mini hdmi port (for a second monitor or to connect to a TV). Display is only 1366x768 but that is plenty for its size. One downside is I think it only does 2.4GHz wifi but if you really need 5GHz you can use a USB dongle.

It does not have a fan but does not get hot. So I expect the CPU is very energy efficient.  I'm using the laptop now, and have not charged it in about 8hrs. Battery gauge says 29% remaining and estimates 3h10min left. I've mostly been using the web browser (Brave), not videos.

When considering upcycling an older laptop, swapping out an old 'spinning rust' drive for a new SSD can make a huge difference in performance.
Also if the RAM is upgradable, it is usually inexpensive to max out the memory on older laptops.
Swap files on mechanical hard drives make computers SLLOOOOWWW.(by today's standards)
So having an SSD and lots of RAM goes a long way.

I guess my vote for the best, most environmentally friendly laptop would be—a used one.  Depending on the laptop, much of the hardware can be swapped out for new parts.  This should make an old laptop run much, much better as many have already said.  

I have a daughter that recently bought a new laptop from a company that specializes in modularity.  Literally every single component of the laptop can be accessed and replaced.  And by everything, I mean not just the memory and battery, but the actual motherboard, the screen, the individual components of the case, keyboard—everything!  You can even pick and choose which input & outputs you want.  With all this modularity, any single part of the computer can be replaced if it goes bad.  I personally like the idea of replacing a single component a whole lot better than the whole computer.

I agree with Paul that a laptop can last a LOT longer than 2 years.  In my quarter century of teaching I have owned 3 laptops (so 1 every 3 years—not bad, but it is better.  I will explain).

My first laptop was an old Dell that ran a 2.4ghz Pentium processor with a whopping huge, heavy lead-acid battery that had a 3 hour runtime on a perfect day.

My next laptop I actually didn’t purchase, but I got it free for taking a class in graduate school.  That one lasted from about 2008(ish) till 2021.  

In 2021 I needed a laptop for remote teaching and my daughter had already poached the older laptops for parts for her various projects.  I got my present one that has accessible memory, batteries and all other internal parts.  Upgrades to internal components is easy.  It has a 15” screen, but the runtime seems like a smaller screen because the LED screen and SSD’s make for a more power efficient computer.  At the moment I am not running it, but I might add Mint in the future.  I plan to keep this one till it turns to dust, replacing parts as needed.  I can see it lasting a very long time.  10 years seems perfectly plausible.

Eric

Eric Hanson wrote:
Literally every single component of the laptop can be accessed and replaced.  And by everything, I mean not just the memory and battery, but the actual motherboard, the screen, the individual components of the case, keyboard—everything!  You can even pick and choose which input & outputs you want.  With all this modularity, any single part of the computer can be replaced if it goes bad.  I personally like the idea of replacing a single component a whole lot better than the whole computer.

See, this is what confuses me about these projects. Business class laptops are already designed for this. I've replaced keyboards, screens, cracked cases, the list goes on. Because there are so many in use, parts are easily available.

Until the industry gets some regulation and manufacturers use interchangable parts (see ATX standards for desktops), it's a bit of a waste of time for relatively expensive, open source but effectively proprietary, machines.

Eric Hanson wrote:I guess my vote for the best, most environmentally friendly laptop would be—a used one.  

This. A thousand times, this.

I would say that there is enough choice out there for used laptops that you can be really picky. And then choose one that uses less power for more performance which keeps it in use longer. And choose a business one because everything unscrews (even MacBook Pro's with the right screwdrivers) and parts are available.


As a computery person, getting hold of old usable equipment isn't the problem, it's deciding what stuff is good enough to keep, so that the house doesn't get full of it. 'Easy to work on' then moves rapidly up the list of priorities.  

James, I totally agree about some type of ATX-like standard.  I don’t know what this means for every single component, but I love the idea of building a laptop and replacing individual components that become outdated or inoperative as opposed to the whole computer.

I discovered this with desktop computers years ago.  I no longer buy a desktop computer.  I built one and I occasionally, rarely update & replace an old component.  Actually I have only made minor changes since building it in 2013 and I have no desire to swap the whole computer out for a new one any time soon.  About the only item that has been replaced from actual wear has been a hard drive.  I look forward to the day when practically all laptops are this easily fixable.

Eric

Unfortunately, this comes to mind.

James Alun wrote:See, this is what confuses me about these projects. Business class laptops are already designed for this. I've replaced keyboards, screens, cracked cases, the list goes on. Because there are so many in use, parts are easily available

My perspective is that the current open source projects are a hedge against the direction the electronics industry has been headed. With an affluence of money at the top and decreasing willingness to regulate in general, corporations are attempting to institute proprietary technology that blocks consumers from things that allow them to repair/replace without being robbed by middle men or blocked entirely. A healthy open source community seems to me to be the only thing keeping them in check for now, assuring general access to parts. It just makes plain sense to be as aware as practical of the technology you use frequently/depend on, also.

Laptop wise, I loved my MacBook, easily lasted me 7 years and I gamed on it all of those years. I did end up replacing it as I was still gaming at that time and things were starting to get a bit more sluggish.
I built a desktop back in early 2000s bought the biggest, heaviest dullest case I could find having to tell the retailer I wasn’t interested in a case with lights that’d keep me up all night and who was going to care about lights under a desk anyway several times. Within that case however I’ve had 2 motherboards the most recent lasting me now over 10 years. Had to replace the heat sink/fan before the processor! It runs as a media/storage server. Love seeing fellow Linux users! It runs head-less behind a chair only recently out of curiosity and fun changing from running Gentoo to a customized LFS with crude package manager written in bash in a sort of portage-ish fashion.

Forgive me permies, for I have sinned. I bought a 2015 iPad Pro.

The upsides:
Fanless,
Touchscreen,
Lower power,
More Responsive,
Half the weight.
cheap!

The downsides:
the licensing on the video editor I use won’t transfer from osx to iOS.
Can’t install libre office.
No native command line interface.

I actually bought it for controlling sound desks but for day to day use, it’s better than the macbook.
I’ll be keeping the macbook for when I’m back in college next year (Zotero is amazing for essay writing!) and network troubleshooting.

It’s intensely irritating that desktop web browsers (in particular) are so resource intensive, that they are bringing my more powerful MacBook to a crawl but the tablet with half the ram is so much smoother.

Yes, I’ve spent half as much on adaptors and keyboard/cases as I did for the tablet. But the total for that was still half of what a brand new laptop that still only as powerful as my macbook.

Use an iPad.  It does have its frustrations, but it is the best option I have for getting access to the net.

James Alun wrote:Forgive me permies, for I have sinned. I bought a 2015 iPad Pro.

... It’s intensely irritating that desktop web browsers (in particular) are so resource intensive, that they are bringing my more powerful MacBook to a crawl but the tablet with half the ram is so much smoother.

Wait, you repurposed an 8 year old tablet and saved it from the chipper? That's pretty righteous in my book -- there may be whispers of sainthood!  

My darling wife loves her iPads, and they last a long, long time. Me, I don't get along with touchscreens at all -- gimme a keyboard and a mouse.

BTW, re slow browsers it's often the ridiculous mountain of junk that comes with standard web pages that slows things to a crawl on older machines. I use uBlock Origin and Ghostery on my Linux boxes used for casual surfing (though I won't use them on my business machines, since they increase the attack surface). Huge difference! I don't know if there are Mac equivalents.

Thanks Douglas!

I’ll probably move the macbook over to Linux now that the ipad takes over the main computer role. Originally one of the reasons for getting the mac was to keep myself up to date so that I could fix other people’s macs. Now that it’s so out of date, that reason is diminishing.

T Blankinship wrote:One issue I have had with laptops is updating/fixing parts. Saw this on Adam Savage's Tested Youtube. Right now I am using a desktop that is about eight years old and I upgrade the RAM to 16GB. If I was looking for a laptop this one would be on my list.

Anyone know any thing more current on this computer?

After years of no computer I really need something!

I am considering going to a brick phone, but can’t do that until I have a computer.

Most of the discussion on this thread is nearly incomprehensible to me, but this video made the framework look like I could learn.

I have only ever used a mac, except the other kind available at the library.

How hard might the learning process be to learn to use this, which looks like it’s going to be environmentally friendly and easily maintained by a novice.

If you want something modular without much power, maybe a Raspberry Pi (or a similar minipc) can suit you.
This is a mini pc with many connections but no devices. It works on SD cards, and provides built-in motherboard, CPU, RAM and GPU. Any other device, you have to buy it separately and connect to the mini pc, so if any external device fails you just buy another. If you want massive storage, you buy an external hard disk. If you want sound, you buy the loudspeakers, or just the headphones. As long as the connection remains standard (most of them are USB) you will be able to find a replacement.
Once the CPU gets old, it usually calls for an upgrade. And let's face it, when you are upgrading the GPU, the motherboard has to be upgraded too, so has the RAM, which suddenly doesn't work in your new motherboard. For me, it makes sense to have a minipc for as long as it is running properly, and keep all other components separate.

In 15 years i've replaced my motherboard (along with CPU,GPU and RAM) twice, but the screen and the loudspeakers are the same. The keyboard only once.

Abraham Palma wrote:If you want something modular without much power, maybe a Raspberry Pi (or a similar minipc) can suit you.
This is a mini pc with many connections but no devices. It works on SD cards, and provides built-in motherboard, CPU, RAM and GPU. Any other device, you have to buy it separately and connect to the mini pc, so if any external device fails you just buy another. If you want massive storage, you buy an external hard disk. If you want sound, you buy the loudspeakers, or just the headphones. As long as the connection remains standard (most of them are USB) you will be able to find a replacement.
Once the CPU gets old, it usually calls for an upgrade. And let's face it, when you are upgrading the GPU, the motherboard has to be upgraded too, so has the RAM, which suddenly doesn't work in your new motherboard. For me, it makes sense to have a minipc for as long as it is running properly, and keep all other components separate.

In 15 years i've replaced my motherboard (along with CPU,GPU and RAM) twice, but the screen and the loudspeakers are the same. The keyboard only once.

Should I make a new thread to ask:  “In this context, what does power mean?” and

What are SD cards?

And so on😊

Thekla McDaniels wrote:Anyone know any thing more current on this computer?

After years of no computer I really need something!

I am considering going to a brick phone, but can’t do that until I have a computer.

Most of the discussion on this thread is nearly incomprehensible to me, but this video made the framework look like I could learn.

I have only ever used a mac, except the other kind available at the library.

How hard might the learning process be to learn to use this, which looks like it’s going to be environmentally friendly and easily maintained by a novice.

Thekla~
Framework has been regularly working on upgrading and improving their product with an eye toward upgradability and modularity, so would be a leading contender for buying new. However, I'm not sure how much that would help you out. Here's a quick synopsis of my worldview on this tech:

The contemporary world's computer industry is massively arbitrary and artificial. There is almost nothing intuitive about it that isn't itself a product of marketing. Unless you care to invest the time, money, and mental energy into playing with the equipment and reading up on the lingo, you will at best encounter well meaning individuals sharing gobbledygook, but more likely be handed silicon snake oil by those who just want your money or your vote or somesuch.

I'd suggest finding the most trustworthy person you know that is up on technology like this and beg/buy/borrow their expertise to find you a good machine and keep it operating well. They may not have been familiar with environmental impacts in the industry before this, but if there is a real basis for trust you should be able to share this thread with them and let them interpret the gobbledygook for you, they may have their world view altered a bit for the better in the process...

James Alun wrote:Forgive me permies, for I have sinned. I bought a 2015 iPad Pro.

The upsides:
Fanless,
Touchscreen,
Lower power,
More Responsive,
Half the weight.
cheap!

The downsides:
the licensing on the video editor I use won’t transfer from osx to iOS.
Can’t install libre office.
No native command line interface.

A few years back when I had to use an iPad for work, the big problems I noted were:

1) An inability to multitask. I was told iOS could only run processes for a single app at a time. If I punched in a route for the Nav program to figure out, switched to the company app to check on order details, when I switched back to the nav program it would have figured nothing out and only start planning the route when it was up on the main screen again. I never got a solid answer if this was a limitation of the iPad/iOS, a deliberate security 'feature' with iOS, or the result of lack of ability on the people programming the apps for our company.

and 2) Frivolous, 'fashion' elements to the software. iOS would come out with periodic updates that did nothing to fix issues or improve features. The most notable was one where they changed the swipe direction for changing apps. The older apps used to be to one side, then an 'upgrade' came and the old apps were on the other. Why would it matter enough which side they are on to switch it? The only difference in reality was that for a month or two after the change, my vehicle was a greater risk in traffic because I used the swipe changes while driving routes as a way to deal with info without being distracted from the road, except now I had to focus on memorizing which arbitrary construct had replaced the other.

As far as the browsers go, if a more powerful machine is processing websites slower than your iPad, I'd guess the Mac browser was blocking all sorts of tracking greyware junk that iOS is welcoming on board, you are likely sending up flares about all of your web activity to get the seamless, quick experience on the iPad...?

Should I make a new thread to ask:  “In this context, what does power mean?” and

What are SD cards?

And so on😊

Good questions!

I understand acronyms are not very friendly for less technical people. These are a few:
PSU = Power Supply Unit, that's the electric transformer that supplies energy from the grid to the machine.
CPU = Central Processing Unit, the chip that makes the logical operations inside the machine. The actual core of the PC. This is the piece that heats most, and usually comes with fans, though there are fanless CPU for low perfomance tasks.
GPU = Graphical Processing Unit, the chip that does the same just for rendering graphics. Mobile CPU performs both tasks. A gaming GPU has fans too.
RAM = Random Access Memory, the device that holds the data while the CPU is processing it. More RAM allows more and/or heavier processes to run.
Motherboard = The piece that holds the CPU and RAM together, and connects them to the periphericals. The technology for connecting the core units are called buses, and they may limit the speed, so that's why the motherboard must use buses that can work at the CPU/RAM speed.
HD = Hard Disk = A data storage unit for programs, operating system and documents (text or media).
PC = Personal Computer. A set of motherboard, CPU, GPU and RAM, designed for working together, with an installed HD.
Case PC = The PC needs protection against dust, spilled water, and sometimes a bit of help dissipating heat, which is the function of the case.
Periphericals = The hardware that can be connected to the PC, such as screen monitor, keyboard, mouse, printer, louspeakers, and so on.

SD card is easy to answer: it's the same that you find in smartphones and tablets for storing data. It's a type of flash memory. A SD card nowadays has an average of 64GB which is fine for most office / internet browsing applications. As an example, you can install Manjaro linux in less than 10GB, including a few programs, the rest would be free for your documents.
The other options for data storage are CD/DVD (permanent, but deprecated), Mechanical disks (IDE/SATA connections), Solid State Disks (SATA or M2 connections), and flash memories (USB/SD).

Defining power is more complex. I mean power both in terms of electricity consumption and computing capabilities (actually, the correct term is performance). For example, a top gaming computer might need a 1000W power supply (PSU). A 52" screen may eat another 100W, playing high demanding games is not cheap. My "gaming" PC runs with a 350W PSU, but that's because I play not very demanding games. An average laptop consumes 65W,
In comparison, a minipc may consume 15W, and you can run it with a 2.5V charger, not counting the peripherals.
Power is relative, too. A high performance tablet still consumes less energy than the average PC, while the tablet feels like it is doing more tasks and is more responsive, partly because its software is not bloated with things that you do not need, partly because the chip is more efficient. (Side note: best efficience chips are all made in Taiwan.)

Modern CPU are very efficient in terms of computing power vs electicity consumption, thanks to smartphones and tablets that have encouraged development in this direction. But if you need raw computing power, say because you are a scientist modeller and need to perform complex simulations, then you cannot go with these efficient CPU, you need a powerhorse like the Intel i7. If you are a Bitcoin miner, then you need a high performance GPU. If you are a gamer, you need both CPU and GPU. If you need power and mobility, then you need a laptop.
If you just want some web browsing, media management and this kind of low demanding tasks, then yes, a good tablet is enough.

Understanding the above is necessary if we are to buy just what we need, and not fall into the fallacy of the consumerism. The same that most of us don't need a McMansion, most of us will never make efficent use of a gaming laptop.
Also, in my experience, all these devices have different live expectancy. Cheap tablets/smartphones are outdated in 3 years. Laptops in 5 years. PC might feel outdated in 8 years, but there's the option to upgrade a few components, or keep using old software.

Thekla McDaniels wrote: “In this context, what does power mean?”

This is where everyone who ‘know’s a lot about computers’, takes a deep breath, cracks their knuckles and asks “what do you want to use your computer for?”.

It’s not because they are trying to gatekeep or nerdsplain (huh, new word?). It’s because the real answer involves flops, L2, L3, sockets, mhz, ghz, busses…

There are 4 main components
 Fast cpu with lots of cores = lots of big brains working together.
 Lots of Ram = really big desk space so you don’t have to keep going back to the filing cabinet.
 Powerful gpu = really it’s a separate little computer that just focuses on getting the information that the processor spits out displayed on the screen in front of you.
 Storage - the filing cabinet.
      SSD’s are a big lump of silicon that can read and write information really quickly (but much slower than ram).
      Hard disks (as opposed to floppy disks, remember those?) are big chunks of metal that spin. Generally cheaper per unit of storage but S.  L.  O.  W.
      SD cards (USB sticks, flash memory) are a type of SSD that are slower, less reliable and shorter lifespan but cheaper than SSD’s.

Getting the first 3 to work together can be complex. Most of the planning stage consists of choosing the motherboard (think mothership). Not all ram fits all motherboards, fits all cpus.

Abraham is suggesting a motherboard where all of this stuff is glued down. This means there are no decisions to make.

(That was a hell of an introduction)

So your geeky friend is trying to work out which combination of the above you actually need (unless you have invite money and electricity, then just go for the most expensive thing you can find)

Video editing or gaming (Real gaming not just candy crush) is the only time you really need a powerful gpu. (Mining rigs are not up for discussion here.) But everything else needs to be powerful keep up.
Massive datasets (excel sheets with thousands of formulas, big databases, seti) needs a lot of ram and a powerful processor.
Lots of things running at the same time ( I will usually have 60 web tabs open on my work computer) needs a good chunk of ram but no real graphics or processor requirements.
Online shopping, book writing etc should easily be possible on a computer from 30 years ago if you can find replacement parts and if developers gave a damn about coding efficiently. Abraham’s raspberry pi should work perfectly for this, IF you can cope with Linux.

I’m not going to add Windows vs Mac vs Linux because this is already too long. But I will say that not all software will run on all hardware and so choosing the software (some of it) needs to happen before we chooses the hardware.

Oh, and now you want to work out how to use as little electricity as possible as well?



This was grossly short and inadequate but might help you start to ask questions.

I assume that was as clear as mud.

Abraham beat me to it but I’ll leave my post up as we’ve approached the question slightly differently.

Coydon Wallham wrote:
A few years back when I had to use an iPad for work, the big problems I noted were:

1) An inability to multitask. I was told iOS could only run processes for a single app at a time. If I punched in a route for the Nav program to figure out, switched to the company app to check on order details, when I switched back to the nav program it would have figured nothing out and only start planning the route when it was up on the main screen again. I never got a solid answer if this was a limitation of the iPad/iOS, a deliberate security 'feature' with iOS, or the result of lack of ability on the people programming the apps for our company.

I don’t know about then but I can run 2 apps side by side. Last night I was watching a film on VLC, while browsing the web.

One of the ways that tablets reduce processing power requirements is by not having a windowing system.

But also, you’re right that if it’s not on the screen, then it get’s pretty much no processor time.

Coydon Wallham wrote:
and 2) Frivolous, 'fashion' elements to the software. iOS would come out with periodic updates that did nothing to fix issues or improve features. The most notable was one where they changed the swipe direction for changing apps. The older apps used to be to one side, then an 'upgrade' came and the old apps were on the other. Why would it matter enough which side they are on to switch it? The only difference in reality was that for a month or two after the change, my vehicle was a greater risk in traffic because I used the swipe changes while driving routes as a way to deal with info without being distracted from the road, except now I had to focus on memorizing which arbitrary construct had replaced the other.

That sound like something that should be configurable

Coydon Wallham wrote:
As far as the browsers go, if a more powerful machine is processing websites slower than your iPad, I'd guess the Mac browser was blocking all sorts of tracking greyware junk that iOS is welcoming on board, you are likely sending up flares about all of your web activity to get the seamless, quick experience on the iPad...?

I think it’s more like tablet browsers don’t let stuff run in the background. But it was mostly the memory hogging. Which is partly browser developers being lazy like just leaving the whole cache in ram and web developers who go “ooh, the internet is quicker now. Let’s fill it with pretty stuff that doesn’t really do much’. Most sites should be static but CMS’s let noobs build anything and developers be lazy.

I’m fairly careful about tracking and I do use adblocking on the tablet.

I appreciate the tutorials!

Any the insights into the industry.

Thanks very much!