In This Issue...

- MSI Mega PC SFF - ABIT Fatal1ty AN9 32X - MSI K9N Dimond Mobo - Biostar P4M890-M7 Mobo - Biostar V-Ranger 7600GS - PCstats Weekly Tips Newsletter Archives

Hello,
It's 2007, when was the last time you backed up your photos, important data, music, email or whatever? If the answer is "ummm...." take a moment later today and back it up.

External hard drives work great, or grab a couple recordable DVD-Rs and burn that data to disc in 4.7GB chunks. There's nothing worse than loosing a years' worth of digital photo's, or "all that work" so back it up! Hard drives fail, and judging by the letters of thanks PCSTATS has received this past week for our Guide to Hard Drive Data Recovery, there is something about this time of year that leads to lots of data disasters.

Next week PCSTATS will be covering the 40th annual Consumer Electronics Show! CES 2007 is shaping up to be an exciting event, with new nForce 680i and 650i motherboards aplenty, and a few surprises we can't yet talk about... Keep it tuned to PCSTATS.com for coverage from the CES 2007 show floor.

What Do You Do With Old Computers? - Part II
Canadian professor and world-renowned environmentalist Dr. David Suzuki often refers to the lack of a "connect" when discussing the average person and our environment. The "connect" he refers to is the idea that we don't see our actions in the world and the result of those actions as related occurrences. More often than not, most of us are content to know that a problem has gone away, rather than know what happens after it's out of our sight. This is how phosphates and dichlorides can invariably end up in our rivers and lakes; we flush the stuff and forget about it. A parallel situation is brewing with e-waste, and in an effort to stem the future effects of these components, many governments are beginning to strongly regulate the materials that go into electronics, and how take the issue of how they are disposed of at the end of their useful life more seriously. Product Sustainability Lets be honest with ourselves for a moment. In the long run, most of us don't think about the environment outside of what directly affects us... hot days, smog, litter in front of our house - that sort thing. At the end of the day, the economic burden we face on a business or personal scale is the price tag that weighs heaviest, and this is a key facet of sustainability. If we take a moment to rethink the economics of something as trivial as tossing out an old junked computer, the idea of "garbage" can be viewed in a whole new light. Consider the amount of time, money and energy spent in acquiring and transporting the materials, not to mention actually making the thing in question. When that old DVD player or Pentium II computer finally gets unplugged for the last time, the idea of simply sentencing everything it's composed of to an eternity as "just garbage" is rather odd. In the shadow of a looming demand for energy and raw materials, sustainability basically means that the products we produce should minimize their impact both at the beginning, and end of their life cycles. Economically speaking, if we knew the price of copper were to rise significantly, would it then make sense that we're tossing out tones of the stuff in old electronics while still going through the trouble of mining tones more from the ground? Reclaiming materials from obsolete electronics can be tricky, and to be realistic the face value of a good majority of an old PCs bits and pieces is low... However, include the cost of energy to refine those raw materials, and the equation certainly changes. Include the costs associated with disposal, and the equation changes a little more. Stay tuned for Part 3 next week. - Daniel Quinn "Get the 'Stats and Stay Informed!"

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Editor-in-Chief. Max P. Weekly Tips. Colin S. Columnist. Daniel Q. Contact PCstats Newsletter FAQ |Tips Archives

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