<p>Depends on what you mean by “reformatted (nuked)” - if you just mean a simple standard reformat and reinstall of the operating system, the data will still be quite easy to recover by free and easily available software.</p>
<p>To actually get rid of data, you need to use a program that writes over all drive sector multiple times (which takes hours and hours, and demonstrates why a simple reformat cannot possibly get rid of old data), or even better, physically destroy the surface of the platters (where the data is actually stored).</p>
<p>I personally wouldn’t dispose of a computer without destroying the hard drive. As other people have mentioned, drives these days are huge and hold a massive amount of personal data about us, including financial information, passwords, family pictures/videos/etc, job/work data and information, etc. etc. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>haha I’ve seen videos on youtube of people shooting their hard drives with shotguns, hitting them with sledgehammers, etc. but the best is probably a video of some guys melting down the platters into an aluminum ingot in a metal-working forge.</p>
<p>I go the sledgehammer route. Use it at my office when we replace computers every 5 or 6 years or so. After putting up with the vagaries of technology during each cycle, it is very gratifying to computer by computer take out the hard drives and beat the hell out of them. :)</p>
There are tools to help you find all these startup programs and disable them. My 6 year old desktop takes about two minutes to start up. 10 minutes is painful.</p>
<p>
That’s a nice rationalization for a new system. </p>
<p>The new one could use zero power though, and it probably wouldn’t pay for itself in five years.</p>
<p>I just replaced the motherboard and cpu in my 6 year old desktop ($50, thank you ebay!) rather than spring for a whole new system, just didn’t want to spend that much money right now. The temperature monitoring program I use was showing that it was running hotter and hotter, but I never got around to reseating the heak sinks with fresh thermal paste, and something burned out. When I took the heaksink off the old motherboard the paste was completely dried out.</p>
<p>Our town dump used to have a “put-and-take” area for old computers, and I scored some decent hardware from that over the years. Never found any porn, but did find credit card numbers and banking info.</p>
<p>Well, my desktop was pretty cheap and, to some extent, you get what you pay for. It’s also running an unsupported operating system (Windows XP x64 edition - no SP3 and no support) so Antivirus and Antispyware is very important. I go around and clean systems from time to time and keep my systems fairly clean. It’s easier on Mac OS X (Unix) as I just have to go through the system log looking for what’s getting run along with the amount of time that those startup items are taking. On Windows, you have processes that can startup from several different areas that have to be checked.</p>
<p>I think that the biggest startup costs are downloading new virus and spyware definitions.</p>
<p>I also have two Core i7 systems at the office. Both with 9 GB of RAM. One runs Linux and the other Windows. They both startup very fast though still not as fast as the Mac. Average CPU usage on the Windows Core i7 is 1%. It has way more CPU horsepower than I need but that makes it very responsive.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>350 watts x 24 hours/day x 15 cents/kwh x 365 days/year = $459.9 per year. It runs two CFCL-backlit monitors (one 24 inches and one 17 inches) and an external disk which use additional power. I don’t run my system 24 hours a day but you can eat up a fair amount of power with older equipment. My older laptops have 130 Watt power adapters. My newer laptops that have far more compute and graphics power use 85 Watt adapters. My iPad uses far less power than my laptops do.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I’ve replaced processors, drives, memory, software, graphics cards, etc. in the past.
Most of my desktops are dirt cheap systems from Dell and they do try to make it
difficult to do more than modest upgrades. I like the stuff from Apple these days as
I work on Unix in my day job and just prefer the Unix environment to Windows.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I have about 17 or 18 computers. I’ve kept the hard drives of the systems that I’ve thrown out. I could always use the device that we have at work for destroying the information on hard drives but I have plenty of space at home for old electronic junk.</p>
<p>The MacBook Pro startup is so fast because of a cool device that I bought recently. It’s a 48 GB ExpressCard SSD. It was relatively cheap because it is small and it provides a better solution compared to simply replacing the HDD with an SSD. The combination of an SSD for the OS and applications and the use of the HDD for user data gives you the best of both worlds in performance. This isn’t a practical option for my home desktop as a disk large enough for the OS would cost considerably more than the system originally cost me.</p>
Just because the power supply is rated at 350 watts doesn’t mean you are drawing that much power all the time. Average is probably more like 150-200 watts. </p>
<p>So a more realistic cost estimate is</p>
<p>200 watts x 12 hours/day x 15 cents/kwh x 365 days = around $130/year.</p>
<p>Even if a new desktop uses half the power (unlikely), you are only saving $65 a year. For a $500 system that’s a 7+ year payback.</p>
<p>The monitors have their own power supply which is independent of the desktop you use.</p>
<p>If you use anything other than on-board video for your graphics, a new system will likely use more power than an old system, modern graphics cards use a lot of power. The systems I was recently spec-ing out all came with 450-500 watt power supplies to support the graphics.</p>
<p>
Why I hate Dell: I had a buddy with a Dell, and the power supply went bad. Rather than buy one from Dell for $200, he bought an off-the-shelf one for $40, and hooked it up. When he plugged it in, the system immediately fried itself. It seems that (for a while at least) Dell was not using the industry-standard pin configuration on the main power connector to the motherboard. If you didn’t use a Dell power supply, you ended up with a boat anchor.</p>
<p>
I only have 6, but I don’t hang on to my retired ones, I either give them away or dispose of them. You got me beat there. </p>
<p>Yes, but I’m arguing with your original premise - against a theoretical
computer that uses zero power.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Unless you go with an iMac. The iMac has an LED-backlit screen which
provides power savings and doesn’t heat up like my 24 inch CFCL monitors.
Furthermore, I’d only need one monitor given the very high resolution of
the iMac display.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I’m fine with integrated video. I’m happy with Intel x3100 graphics and
that’s two generations old. The low-end iMacs use low-end ATI cards.
The MacBook Pros use switchable graphics so you get the best of both
worlds.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Yup, I’ve heard those stories too.</p>
<p>Dell gives you the best bang for the buck if you order a bare bones
system and upgrade the parts yourself. I think that they actually lost
money on some of the systems that I ordered. They make big margins on
memory, disk and other options.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>My kids like to keep the old ones around - they are packrats when it
comes to computer nostalgia. I do like some old hardware though. I still
have my HP-67 that I got in the 1970s. It still works and I still use it
from time to time - especially around taxes. The funny thing I recall from
the 1990s was going to the Smithsonian and seeing my HP-67 there.</p>
<p>Every computer I’ve replaced I’ve replaced after a hard-drive failure (I use Carbonite), so I’ve never bothered to do anything with the remains other than take them to a computer-recycling store.</p>
Fine - at $130/year, a five year payback would be $650, which will buy a nice mid-range system. Plus, living in NH, you will recapture some of the power of the old computer as lower heating bills, which I am sure are the majority of your energy costs. A theoretical computer that used no power would raise your heating bill more than it would lower your cooling bill.</p>
<p>
The cheapest iMac is, what, $1200 for a 21"? $1700 and up for the 27"?</p>
<p>You can never justify this economically based on power savings alone.</p>
<p>We heat with natural gas and cool with electricity. This past summer was brutal in the prolonged heat wave that we suffered through. Natural gas prices are $385 per MBTUs at the moment - pretty cheap. We have to pay Seabrook Nuclear Decommissioning charges for electricity and a bunch of other fees related to deregulation. I run my computer in the basement which has a walkout. The temperature down there can get into the 20s. I generally use a space heater to keep warm - the computer does zero for heat in the winter.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I get considerably more compute power and more screen real estate which adds to my productivity when I am working from home or trading stocks. I generally make more trading stocks than I do in my day job so the ability to display realtime charts and do stock analysis is very important to me. If I can spend $1,700 and improve my trading performance, then the cost is relatively minor.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, a full format no longer erases the data from the hard drive. You need to find software that will make at least one pass over the hard drive, filling it with zeroes or some other pattern. More than one pass is overkill.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, a full format no longer erases the data from the hard drive. You need to find software that will make at least one pass over the hard drive, filling it with zeroes or some other pattern. More than one pass is overkill.</p>
No, it’s not a myth which is why there are mil-spec standards for destroying data on a drive before they’ll let it out of a secure facility without physical destruction. This usually involves a number of write operations with different data patterns. Just writing all 0s or all 1s, which is what a format (with write to all sectors) does, won’t completely wipe out the actual magenetic signals on the drives. Of course, one would have to go to some real effort to attempt to read the area and it’d usually involve using different electronics to interpret the signals so a casual hacker probably wouldn’t bother with it.</p>
<p>That article appears to be an opinion piece of an individual. All I can say is that security conscious governments and financial institutions take the subject very seriously and have requirements that are more than a simple format of 0s or 1s.</p>
</p>