Maingear Touts New Rig As "Planet's Greenest Gaming PC" 136
Maingear has just unveiled what they are calling the "planet's greenest gaming PC." Built using a small form factor and coming with Intel's new Ion graphics as the default option, this little powerhouse is built with a definite eye toward energy consumption. "Said configuration is available with Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs and an 80+ certified 300-watt power supply; those who care more about frame rates than Ma Earth can opt for a GeForce 9800 GT ECO, which — despite being a discrete, power-hungry GPU — still swallows some 40 percent less power than a standard 9800 GT. You'll also find WiFi support, room for an optional Blu-ray drive and TV tuner, upwards of 8GB of RAM and room for a single 2.5-inch HDD or SSD. The whole box checks in at just 7.6- x 8.3- x 11.4-inches, and it's available for order right now starting at $799."
-intel's- ION "graphics"? (Score:1, Funny)
Intel's? What did I miss?
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You didn't miss much.
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I bet the CEO of Nvidia would skin any man alive that calls the ION "Intel's ION".
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You missed the "livis" part in the middle?
The only green move (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The only green move (Score:4, Informative)
and if you do, keep your current machine as long as possible. the manufacturing process is the most ecologically unfriendly aspect of computer manufacture, followed by landfill at end of life. and when you do finally replace your machine, try to replace components. your case is still good and there's usually no need to demand a new one be made for you. and when you replace components, try to recycle them. even in bfe rural virginia my county accepts electronics for recycling. chances are good that your municipality does too. if not, then many big box stores are starting to as well.
Re:The only green move (Score:5, Funny)
the manufacturing process is the most ecologically unfriendly aspect of computer manufacture
Is it really?
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You found where CPUs, RAM, motherboards grow on threes! Tell me! Tell me!
If you look up what is involved in making a pcb, the environmentalists have a point. Can me make these and be green? I am not sure the entire process can be 100% green.
Wasn't there some gold used in older pcbs? I seem to remember people taking the broken motherboards and such and melting the gold out of them.
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If you use your computer to design nuclear weapons or club baby seals, that might be worse.
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Look at what is needed to refine the raw materials, manufacture the computer, then ship it to you. Then at the end of life, the costs of properly disposing of the computer which usually involves shipping it to some facility where they have to deal with some fairly toxic stuff. In comparison, during the computer's life, all that it really needs is electricity, and a relatively small amount of electricity at that. Probably less than 10,000 KWH for the lifetime of most computers out there. Really, the most
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the manufacturing process is the most ecologically unfriendly aspect of computer manufacture
On the other hand, smoking pot is actually quite environment-friendly.
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Get rid of ARE YOU INSANE!!! I'm running my file server on a 586 Pentium system with the F00F bug. It...has connectors taken off for other repairs. I don't need no stinking keyboard even to load an OS. The AMD64 will be the media server as the 586 does not stream movies well. The P90 stink pad is now a picture frame. It randomly displays pictures from the file server or if I push the porn button (the P key) it surfs the web and displays...things. The other stink pad with the CD and the P133 is used by a fri
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Ah yes, the WarGames [imdb.com] defense!
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Or just paint your box neon green with blinky green LEDs!!!
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Ummm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ummm... (Score:5, Interesting)
What part of this machine does "not qualify as a real gaming PC"? The GeForce 9800 or the Core 2 Duo? Is it the 8gig of RAM?
Or is it "not a gaming PC" because it doesn't have neon lights, racing stripes and tinted glass?
Which game will this computer not play at very high levels?
Re:Ummm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ummm... (Score:4, Insightful)
The Core 2 Duo isn't exactly blazing fast...
No game I've played has even been constrained by my Core 2 Duo (E6600). Heck, I keep it downclocked to 1.6 GHz (vs. 2.4 GHz standard) most of the time and often forget to reset the clock to normal before launching a game. I rarely notice the difference. Of course, it follows that at this point, overclocking the CPU is a pointless exercise. The GPU matters, but on smaller monitors (read: 1680x1050 or less), most games can't even max out the capabilities of a high end two year old graphics card.
Also, a gaming PC is a gaming PC based on performance, not expandability. Yes, I built my home desktop on a huge chassis to allow expandability, but from age 5-24 I used pre-built gaming PCs that rarely had an upgrade more extreme than an extra stick of memory.
The lack of expandability is an arguable knock against its greenness though, for exactly the reason you gave.
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Here's the companies website and order page for this product. http://www.maingear.com/products/desktops/pulse/ [maingear.com].
The "Eco" GForce isn't even part of the $799.00 price tag and will add $99.00 for the cheapest option. Likewise, you can upgrade to 8BG (64-bit Vista requried) for ~$100 as well as a Quad-Core 2.6 Processor. It certainly isn't the $5k Alienware you can get, but it's not a terrible gaming PC for the price. And you can increase your e-peen for "green gaming" despite gaming itself not being very ec
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My current setup:
2008 Mac Pro (running WinXP when gaming)
8x2.8GHz Xeon cores
10GB RAM
2x1GB Radeon 4870 (Crossfire)
That's a fucking gaming rig. Core 2 Duo my ass, that's what my Mac Mini media-head has.
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You are a sad little person.
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Yes. Yes I am. The main reason I care is that I've ALWAYS had a slow machine nearly my whole life, and I FINALY have something that kicks ass. Plus it crunches numbers and does simulations with the best of them.
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If you use enough paint it becomes green.
9800 is quite decent for gaming though. I don't know why they mentioned "Intel's Ion Graphics". For starters, Ion is made by nVidia, and it's primarily a chipset with an integrated 9400 which is pretty much garbage for gaming, AND it's for the Atom CPU, which is weak.
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Same thing with green, it uses a bit too much power to be considered really all that green.
For one thing, they could start by using an efficient power supply...these days, "80 PLUS" isn't really a big deal
Instead, how about going for up to 12% more efficiency with an "80 PLUS Gold" supply. In addition, every supply that is more than the base "80 PLUS" has better power-factor correction values for the vast majority of loads. As usual, it's covered pretty well in the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org].
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(Next thing you know, someone's going to start going on about using Monster Brand (TM) cables to reduce impedance and thus waste heat for internal componentry, such as the connections between the CDROM and the motherboard...)
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Take it to the max, dude.
Slashvertising... (Score:2, Insightful)
Eco what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Slap together some mid range components, an ugly case and call it Prius... err Pulse.
It's "eco-conscious" says the article/advertisement/press release.
Too much power usage to be truly green. Too little performance to be a real gaming rig. Lame.
Oh. My. God. (Score:2)
Next up, world's most efficient sports car (Score:5, Funny)
And for their next trick, they're targeting the auto industry, planning a sports car that gets 40 mpg.
Sure, it may have an unimpressive 0-60 time of 8.4 seconds, but they've gotta hop on this "green" bandwagon while they still can!
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Tesla... [teslamotors.com]
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I think you just described a toyota prius ricer. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/08/sweden-extreme-toyota-prius-pimped-out-mods.php
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8.4 seconds for 0-100 km/h is pretty impressive.
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For sports car enthusiasts, its not that great. For people with average sized genitalia, it's more than sufficient.
*ducks*
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No hills here, and no money either. Took me seven bloody years to repay the Daewoo.
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Not by American standards. With our oversized, inefficient engines, completely stock minivans like the Honda Odyssey can post times like that.
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Another star on my green collar! :) (Score:1)
Perhaps I can mount this little beast inside my hybrid-electric Hummer, Pimp My Ride Style!
Yo dawg, I heard you like irony...
I'm conflicted... (Score:5, Insightful)
On the one hand, this seems like a good alternative. On the other, the notion is basically incompatible. After all, wouldn't the greenest thing of all be to simply unplug and go till your garden?
I fear that 'green' is becoming more about fashion than it is about the Earth, and the notion of a green way to do a very non-green thing seems to support that. Sort of like a hybrid SUV, an eco-friendly landfill, or a more merciful way to kill whales.
Some things just aren't green...
Why do I feel the need to go buy carbon credits just for posting this?
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Re:I'm conflicted... (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's about efficiency curves. Good power supplies like those from Corsair, Antec's NeoPower series, and some of PC Power and Cooling will actually show you the efficiency at different watt draws. Most power supplies are most efficient between 50-80% of their capacity. Systems with multiple gpus, intel chipsets and quad cores tend to use tons of power so high watt power supplies are necessary while also more efficient.
Take a system that uses 200-250 watts on load and the best power supply choice will be a
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First of all, as Penguinoflight already said, a power supply's efficiency per power drawn would look somewhat like a (ideally very wide, steep-sided and flat-topped) bell curve. Drawing 400 W from a 700 W PSU might draw 450-500 W (80-90% efficiency) from the grid; a 400 or 450 W unit near it's peak would probably drop in efficiency, drawing more like 550 W or so.
Moving on, the more high-performance hardware in a PC, the wider it's power draw will vary. If you've got one (standard) CPU, one (standard) GPU, o
Re:I'm conflicted... (Score:5, Insightful)
I fear that 'green' is becoming more about fashion than it is about the Earth
Wait, it hasn't always been about fashion?
Re:I'm conflicted... (Score:4, Insightful)
There might be some people who like to play games but still want to keep their power consumption down a bit. Of all the gizmos in a person's house, the computer is not really the most power hungry, nor does it waste the most power.
Just because some things are not generally associated with conservation does not mean an effort should not be made to make their power consumption more efficient. Driving cross country isn't generally considered "green" but I'd still rather do it in a Prius than a Hummer.
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On the one hand, this seems like a good alternative. On the other, the notion is basically incompatible. After all, wouldn't the greenest thing of all be to simply unplug and go till your garden?
That, I believe, is a false dichotomy. The "all-or-nothing" idea is popularized by a small minority of eco-nuts who think the only way into the future is by going backward (i.e., grow all your own food, get off the grid, total rejection of consumerism, etc.). Those eco-nuts are then lambasted by right-wing nuts, who believe that minority represents the entire green movement (anti-hippie hysteria ensues). Meanwhile, they take pride in gas-guzzlers, ridicule global climate change, and generally gravitate to t
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My computer is green, but I built it based on cost and wanting to play L4D.
I have an Athlon X2 4000($70?), Asus M3N78 Pro($120), 2x1GB of RAM ($15), 8800GS ($45), a Corsair HX620 ($100), and a 640GB WD HDD($110).
Those prices are from around when I built it, which is just about a year back, and are in CAD.
Just recently I picked up a Kill-A-Watt [newegg.com]. It turns out it consumes 170 watts when playing L4D. But if I shut off my monitor, that drops to about 135w. Then I shut off my speakers, 128w. Then I exit from L4D
Typo (Score:2)
coming with Intel's new Ion graphics as default option
Ion is an nVidia product, not an Intel product. The terms "Intel graphics" and "gaming PC" should never be used together.
Re:Typo (Score:4, Interesting)
Nvidia Atom (Score:2)
This can only be right when the story title is: Intel buys Nvidia
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Hopefully it would be the other way around. I would hate to see what would happen to nVidia under Intel's managment.
Or... (Score:1)
You could theoretically keep the case, fans, dvd drives, maybe the HD between builds. Will you end up paying a little more over a bare-bones setup. Depends on where you buy and what deals you find.
Re-using is more eco-friendly than recycling.
On a different note, doesn't a 9800 require a power hook-up, and isn't the suggested minimum PowerSupply 400W? I thought I noticed that the last time I was
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Not all of them.
The power supply suggestion on any part is an arbitrary decision by the manufacturer. Its main function is to keep people who don't know better from buying parts that won't work - the assumption being that any power supply advertised as "400" or "500" W will be good enough.
No.
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You're forgetting the motherboard. It's kind of hard to put a number on the power draw of most motherboards - the manufacturers don't like to give out numbers (I wish they would!), and it's hard to measure the power draw of just the motherboard in a running system. However, most people put motherboards at about 30-40W+ peak, which is going to use up most of the rest of the available power. Throw in some extra draw from the fans, USB devices, etc. and you're uncomfortably (imho) close to the limit. Certa
That's kind of a stretch. (Score:4, Insightful)
Given the probable lifetime energy savings of that $800 box over the $400 DIY job, plus the base environmental costs of building all those parts, you're essentially spending money to have someone else make you feel better.
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But isn't that what 90% of the "Green/eco friendly" shit is.
You pay more money to feel better and solve nothing?
It's like the grocery stores around here charging .20 a bag.. to help you protect the enviroment by not using Plastic...
Fact is, now instead of having grocery bags I can use to pick up dogshit/put in the kitchen waste basket, I'm not having to buy plastic bags to do said jobs.
So what exactly have they protect? Oh right, there bottom lines by charging .20 a bag lol.
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And I pay double, and still destroy the earth lol
Way to not do a damn thing, but make your company make some more money. lol
Small form factor? (Score:1)
That just makes it harder to fit enormous graphics cards in the case. Is that supposed to be a green selling point?
Also, why have wifi access? That sucks for online gaming because of its unreliablity.
Other than that, looks like a sweet build. Good price too. Computer gaming really isn't that expensive it's been looking like lately. If your buying a computer, might as well pony up a little more moola and play games on it too.
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Small form factor is easier to take to LAN parties.
A couple companies now make micro-ATX X58 boards. There are a few micro-ATX chassis out there that can easily fit the board plus a high-end vid card (or two,) while still being easily portable.
Not 'green', as this company claims, but portable. I'd love a second X58 box as a LAN-box. My main box is just huge. And pricing it out, I could build a passable X58 mini-box for $1000.
WiFi may not be as reliable for gaming, but it works for web browsing.
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Just a nitpick. I used to play online games via encrypted 802.11g on a laptop, and I'd regularly see 5ms ping times (round trip time), and this was in an area where there were two dozen other networks in range (i.e. there was plenty of interference). Granted, the router's connection to the world was 15Mbps fiber, but my point is that the wireless connection was not a bottleneck.
Wireless is fine for online gaming, as long as you're not trying to play a hundred yards from the router.
Enough already (Score:2)
That's not a gaming PC. Where's the SLI? Where's the upgradeability and massive hard drive space? Where's the modern graphics card -- the 9800 GT is a few generations old already, just imagine where it'll be a year or two down the road.
Stop with the silly "green" crap, seriously. This system is at best a midrange small form-factor PC with an inflated price tag. While it might play current games, it's nowhere near future-proof, and its price tag isn't low enough to justify that fact.
300 Watts is green? (Score:4, Informative)
Then what the hell is the Mac mini [apple.com] at only 110W?
Sure, it's not a "gaming PC" but it does have a 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and the nVidia 9400M is about the same as Ion graphics too, not to mention that the Mac mini is smaller and cheaper. And yes, you can install Windows on it if you want.
So what's special about that not-so-small Maingear "green" PC again?
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The PSU can supply 300W. It doesn't mean that it _uses_ 300W. In fact, that machine from TFA probably idles at around 30-40W and tops at about 100W.
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Not to mention the Mini is 110W at full load.
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Why is this modded up? The quoted numbers from the parent are for maximum load power, not typical power. I have a machine sitting right here with a 500W PSU, but does that mean it uses all 500W? Of course not, when hooked up to a "kill-a-watt" the readings are around 80w during normal loads.
I doubt both the mac mini and this "green" pc use the maximum power offered by the power supplies.
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Actually 110W is also the maximum wattage since it's the Mac mini power supply maximum.
BOFH on green computing (Score:5, Funny)
Oblig. BOFH [theregister.co.uk]:
"A REAL computer has ONE speed and the only powersaving it permits is when you pull the power leads out of the back!" I blurt. "In fact, a REAL computer would have a hole in the front to push trees into and an exhaust pipe out the back for the black smoke to come out of."
Holy misuse of codenames, Batman! (Score:3, Interesting)
Alright, where to begin...
"ION" is nVidia's, not Intel's. (Only the story submitter makes this mistake, not TFA.)
"ION" is nVidia's codename for the combination of their 9400 or 9300 integrated graphics chipset plus the Intel Atom processor. This rig uses a Core 2; which makes it *NOT* an ION. It just makes it a Core 2 plus 9400 chipset.
And as others mention, the Mac mini is the same damn thing; only smaller, draws less power, and costs less. (However this one has the ability to add a discrete graphics card, which the Mac mini obviously lacks.)
Green Trends (Score:1)
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ORLY? (Score:2)
You're going to power a dual core processor and a 9800 gt graphics card along with all the other hardware on a 300 watt PSU? Riiiight. Good luck getting it to run stable. Any graphics card alone passed the 7800 mark (for nvidia) tends to require a 500W PSU or greater, not including all the other gear. Green and gaming are inherently counter to each other. Gaming wants more power and more speed at the expense of cooling and energy usage. Green is the exact opposite. A Green Gaming Machine (aside from attachi
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"require a 500W PSU" is an arbitrary suggestion.
The nVidia reference version of the 9800 GT has a maximum draw of 105 W. Newer cards (possibly with 55nm instead of 65nm GPUs) are likely to use less.
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Nvidia recommends at least a 300W power supply for the 9400 GT [nvidia.com], 300W or 400W for the 9600 GT [nvidia.com] (depending on which model you get), and at least 400W for the 9800 GT [nvidia.com].
Granted, if you run these cards with the minimum power supply rating you're going to have a hard time throwing in a RAID array or somesuch nonsense, but the machines in TFA are using 2.5" hard drives and special "ECO" 9800 GTs which use "40% less power than a standard 9800 GT" (putting it easily under the 300W mark).
You're not going to get the sam
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Hmm . . . Well . . (Score:2)
They've been designing extremely power efficient computers for ages -- they're called Laptops. Sure, it wasn't for reasons of being "Green", but rather of Battery life. But the net effect is the same for a consumer interested in having a very power efficient box.
At any rate, these days there are some pretty decent gaming laptop configs that you could buy that I imagine could handle most gaming tasks you throw at them while being a heck of a lot more power effecient -- plus then you'd have the option of un
Corny (Score:1, Flamebait)
This is so corny. Environmentalists are some of the goofiest people alive.
I like how Al Gore started up a carbon credits company just before he released a movie that encouraged people to purchase carbon credits. And when people pointed out how much power his mansion used, he paid himself by purchasing carbon credits from his own company.
Anyway, I'm off to litter.
The greenest game to play (Score:1)
THERMONUCLEAR WAR
Just make sure to just aim for China and the USA
Is it really as efficient as possible? (Score:2)
See here [maingear.com]. The system seems to use desktop PC parts, not mobile parts: a motherboard with an nVidia chipset, a LGA 775 CPU, DDR2 memory, a micro ATX power supply. The system is using Intel desktop CPUs with 65 W TDP and a motherboard with integrated graphics. I would expect a system using a mobile CPU and chipset to use less power.
The "greenest gaming PC" would be a system using a mobile CPU and chipset (and possibly a full desktop GPU) - something similar to the iMac's hardware, perhaps.
Sort of... (Score:3, Funny)
Greenest Gaming PC (Score:4, Insightful)
Is like the most fuel-efficient Hummer. Who cares about it?
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How does it compare to Mac Mini (Score:2)
It has very similar specs to the Mac Mini and is about the same price. TFA says a 300W power supply however, 80+ means that it is (as far as I can see) EPEAT Silver or Gold. The Mac Mini has a 110W power supply so the losses will be smaller. I wonder if somebody will take those 2 machines to a test soon to see how they compare.
The Wii (Score:1)
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The Wii does all of this for about 20W and has a much smaller form factor. I'd say it's much more "green" that the Pulse.
Last time I checked (42 seconds ago), the Wii wasn't a very good replacement for a PC for non-gaming. It was also an order of magnitude slower than a 9800 GT for gaming, and had only a couple of good games.
The real competitor for this is a home built PC based on the Zotac Ion mainboard. Cheaper and better are simultaneously possible if you make it yourself.
Bash away, it deserves it... (Score:2)
As someone said above, the MacMini is a very nicely executed example of this theme, and in a much more tasteful case.
I hate the word "rig" (Score:2)
[crank mode=on]
Am I the only person who's irritated by this use of the word "rig"?
Before computer geeks started using "rig" to refer to their computers, the only commonly used meaning was large trucks, e.g., 18-wheelers.
To call a computer a "rig" irritates me for the same reason that the term "domestic engineer" bothers me: it's trying to gain respect by stealing the respect rightfully earned by the thing to which the word traditionally refers.
Long-story short, it's posing.
[crank mode=off]
Re:I hate the word "rig" (Score:4, Insightful)
The word isn't as narrow as I think you'd like it to be.
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Oh. Ummm... okay then. Thanks.
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No, it actually comes from sailing. The rigging is the combination of all the sails, spars, and cordage that make the boat move. It's been a general term for much longer than big rigs have existed. It's not posing, that's the way language works.
Let's be serious here.. (Score:2)
GREEN FTW! (Score:2)
ASUS M3N78-EM (hybrid SLI, express gate, DDR2)
The AMD 5050e 2.6GHz dual core - 45 watts for your ass
Western Digital caviar gr
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Here's the materials list for an actual Green PC:
1 slab of wood
8-12 marbles
1 chisel
Process:
Cut several parallel grooves into the slab of wood with the chisel. Places marbles in grooves. Use your "green computer [wikipedia.org]" without worrying about power consumption or danger to the
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Do you know how much energy it takes to make those rocks?