U.K. Retailer to Sell Wooden PC

A supposedly zero carbon PC is being developed by U.K. retailer PC World, featuring wood casing for keyboard, screen and mouse. Use of recycled materials and low electricity needs will reduce its carbon footprint to 85 percent of a standard PC.

Reminiscent of a wood-framed Morris Traveller estate the ‘carbon buster’ as it known is mostly made from recycled aluminium, steel and plastics. There is an external power supply and the hardback book-sized aluminium chassis has lots of ventilation slots, removing the need for a fan.
Dixon Stores Group International (DSGi) says its new own-brand PC will draw just 45 watts, 23 percent of a standard PC’s 200 watts, and have the same capacity as a current PC, enough DSGi says, to run Vista. There has been criticism that Vista is a resource-hungry OS and shouldn’t have been chosen. A Green Party spokesperson thought this might be a mistake.

Derek Wall of the Green Party said: “Vista requires more expensive and energy-hungry hardware, passing the cost on to consumers and the environment.”

Simply removing a fan doesn’t reduce a PC’s power-draw by 155 watts, and the expectation is that the wooden PC will use a notebook-class CPU and graphics chips, making it a pedestrian performer. Its enhanced and power-hungry graphics capabilities will probably not be available.

To make the wooden PC carbon-neutral, PC World will buy carbon offsets. These are being criticized as allowing people to use carbon-emitting devices now with no guarantee that an equivalent amount of carbon will actually be taken out of the atmosphere over the next ten to thirty years. It may also offer customers low energy light bulbs.

PC World