Gear & Gadgets / Product News & Reviews  Ars System Guide
special: it’s easy being green   Reduce, reuse, recycle?  A
sticky issue for computers—the steel, aluminum, and plastics in
cases can be easily separated and reused. Separating hard drives
and power supplies to easily processed components (PCBs,
plastics, and motors, the metal casing, etc.) is much more
difficult. The minimalist approach of Sparkle/Fortron-Source's
minimal-materials-used green GLN and HLN series is probably the
best approach here.  Traditionally, reusing old components works
well. Picking up someone else's dining table on Craigslist works
great and saves money, but as we note above, reusing an older,
more power-hungry CRT, power supply, or hard drive may not work
very well. It may be the cheapest initial cost, but again, a
green PC probably isn't about the lowest initial cost. The
environmental impact from manufacturing all of these new
components is probably greater than reusing a bunch of two-year-
old ones, but who's making sense any