I personally take great pride in getting as much use as possible out of everything that I own. My personal best is 6.5 years for a PC. On the other hand, I think that the average American or British consumer is biased the complete other way; they are only too happy to upgrade as often as they can afford to.

I think that it is a great step forward that PCmag has started to raise this issue, but I am a little concerned that they didn’t mention one of the most important parts of the whole equation. I’m talking about “embodied energy”.

Embodied energy takes into account all the energy that is required to manufacture, distribute and dispose of the product. For example many computers are made from aluminum which doesn’t exactly grow on trees. In fact it comes from aluminum ore which has to be mined out of the ground (or recycled) and then smelted. All this requires a lot of energy which is got from burning fossil fuels.

When you start to think in this way, it’s shocking how much damage electronic devices are causing merely by them coming into existence. China has recently overtaken the US as the worlds largest polluter, and I don’t think it is any coincidence that they are also the largest manufacture of consumer electronics. Embodied energy is the invisible demon inside each and every new gadget.

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