I find it curious that you feature an article on being environmentally responsible with IT equipment, prolonging the life of systems already in use and reducing waste, yet the next article is a feature on Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows Vista, which will encourage many people to ditch their old PCs or components in order to be able to use it.

How many PCs are going to end up in landfill sites once Vista is released? It’s fine to say that people can upgrade their PCs to get it working with Vista, but something that seems to have been missed is laptops. It’s near impossible to upgrade laptops, beyond a bigger hard disk or some more Ram. Considering that laptops are now outselling desktops, there are going to be many users stuck with obsolete equipment. This wouldn’t be so bad, but Microsoft will withdraw support for Windows XP within a few years of Vista going live.

It looks like Microsoft is going to push many of its former customers towards Linux, simply because they cannot afford to replace, or just don’t want to dump, perfectly good working equipment. I’m certainly considering moving in that direction when the support for XP ends.

Steven Smith