By Andrew Donoghue, 30 January 2007 08:20
NEWS
The Green Party has claimed Microsoft's latest operating system, Vista, could lead to a mass upgrade of PCs that will result in old machines being dumped in landfill sites.
Speaking ahead of the official UK consumer launch of Vista today, Derek Wall, Green Party male principal speaker, warned that migrating to the operating system would result in many consumers and businesses having to buy new hardware and bin perfectly usable old kit.
Wall said: "Vista requires more expensive and energy-hungry hardware, passing the cost on to consumers and the environment. This will also further exclude the poor from the latest technology, and impose burdensome costs on small and medium businesses which will be forced to enter another expensive upgrade cycle."
Some early adopters of Vista have already reported that the new operating system has forced them to upgrade their hardware. One user who contacted silicon.com sister site ZDNet UK said: "I've had to take two trips to PC World already, which included taking back a very hot video card."
Microsoft has published the minimum specifications required to run Vista. The company said: "Windows Vista-Capable PCs will be able to run at least the core experiences of Windows Vista... [while] Windows Vista Premium-Ready PCs can deliver even better Windows Vista experiences."
Rather than opting for another proprietary OS, the Green Party argues that businesses should look into free software alternatives - such as Linux - as they don't require high-specification hardware. Wall added: "Free software can run on existing hardware, reduces licensing costs for small businesses and affords important freedoms to consumers. The UK government should capitalise on this opportunity to promote the use of free software in public bodies."
The business version of Vista was released on 30 November, 2006. The consumer launch is set to happen on today with a special guest appearance in London by Bill Gates.
The Green Party's warning about the environmental impact of Vista follows a similar statement from the British Computer Society (BCS) in December last year. Nigel Shadbolt, BCS president, said the release of Vista could eventually see large numbers of PCs being upgraded and many old PCs discarded. "PCs contain many toxic components, so if they end up in a landfill we are creating a real problem for the future. It can be really easy to pass on the old machine to be reused, and if it's beyond use, to recycle it," Shadbolt said.
The BCS is advising companies to think about disposing of old PCs through organisations such as UK IT charity Computer Aid, which refurbishes machines for use by schools and the public sector in the developing world.
Upcoming legislation such as the EU Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive will also impact businesses' approach to IT disposal and recycling. WEEE, which was enacted into UK law in January 2007 following a string of delays, sees producers, retailers and consumers forced to contribute to the safe and environmental disposal of electrical equipment.
Microsoft had not responded for requests for comment at the time of writing.
Andrew Donoghue writes for ZDNet UK
Comments
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1. anonymous
Typical of the Green Party, this is proof they don't actually know what day of the week it is. No sensible company will go and scrap all their PC's just to get M$'s latest operating system. Win 2000 and XP are still more than capable of performing 99.9% of work carried out by companies (it may even be as high as 100%).
2. EBGB
Typical of the anti-Greens, to claim that pointing out wasteful behaviour shows no awareness of reality. So Mr.Anonymous reckons that all those domestic users will take the same approach, does he?
And companies are way more likely to dispose of dead kit responsibly. Domestic users will just dump it in the bin, irrelevant of EU regulations.
3. Richard
Yesterday, while buying-up cartridges for my 10-year old inkjet:
(The PC shops were selling-off remaining stocks.)
Many laptops and desktops incapable of running Vista were in the sale.
New PCs & Laptops were either pre-loaded with Vista or had an upgrade voucher - valid only until the end of March 2007.
Soon, it will be hard to buy a PC without Vista.
4. anonymous
Lots of stories talked about the delay Microsoft experienced in rolling out VISTA. It sounded like writing VISTA was a much larger job then initially anticipated. I suspect the writing was the easy part, the hard part for Microsoft was waiting for the hardware vendors to start delivering hardware that could actually run this monster. Even now, VISTA is ahead of its time, its still going to take years before consumers upgrade to the point where they can run VISTA. And then, if they want to run any applications under VISTA...
5. Nick Cole
Absolutely right. Vista is in general a complete and utter waste of money. Other than tidying up security issues which didn't need a wholesale new version, almost all users will gain nothing worthwhile. Except for a need to learn new interfaces, get used to new colour schemes and so on.
Microsoft are very good at re-inventing the wheel, over and over again. The only real driver is for Microsoft to keep generating income by introducing yet more perceived 'must haves', rather than meeting real needs.
Models of hardware from 2, 3 or 4 years ago are still far more than adequate for everything other than the real power user, and there are very few people or jobs in this category.
6. Rob
One day of the year you are sure will be MS bashing day.
The greens are right to a point, as the consumers (as someone else mentioned earlier) will be less responsible.
Although it is possible to run Vista without a complete change of PC, I upgraded an old Athlon XP 1.4 with some extra memory, it has a 64MB Nvidia Graphics card, I've toned down some of the visual effects, works fine.
At the end of the day, the improvements (which someone mentioned earlier) which some would see as a waste of time are early training on what future OS's will be like. MS has blatantly tried to go for the Mac OS feel, for it's ease of use.