Re: [iPad] Carbon footprint: paper vs cloud (Was Re: Too many printer apps available... which to choose?)

 

Yes. Both will be there but there significance will change.
Do you remember pagers?
Wireline telephone models and their features are hardly discussed.
When did you last hear a short-wave radio broadcast?
Too many examples?

Best
PKS 



On 28 Sep 2011, at 17:12, Devitt <devittad@comcast.net> wrote:

 

What uses more power and/or has a bigger carbon footprint, printing or cloud storage?

This is a very interesting topic.  I haven't seen any documented comparisons between them.  Does anyone have more detailed information to share?  Or a link that treats the subject?

I think both will be with us for quite awhile.  So it's not a matter of dissing one and promoting the other.  But understanding what the facts are will make it easier for each of us to make our own decisions.

Cathy

Sent from my iPad 

>>On 9/28/2011 4:40 AM, pabitra saha wrote:
>
>
> Why should there be printing? Save the image/ text on the cloud and use
> it or send it whenever /wherever you need.
> Before Ipod, people could not expect mobile device without memory card.
> Before Ipod touch, people never wanted a personal organiser without
> keyboard.
> Before Iphone 1, users could not visualise a phone without normal SIM or
> replacable batteries.
> Before Ipad, people could not imagine a product without USB port.
> Go paperless, save trees, get carbon credits.
>

Why should there be a cloud?

Your concept that maybe there shouldn't be printing is just as absurd as 
my concept that there shouldn't be a "cloud." Carbon credits for not 
printing? How about negative carbon credits for cloud users -- have you 
any idea what huge electricity power drain all those gigantic server 
farms are, that will be necessary to store everybody's "cloud" data, if 
we all made that leap?

Paper at least is recyclable -- electricity sucked down by server farms 
isn't.

Who's using more energy -- a person printing a few documents (but who 
obviously needs to have a paper supply) or a person who has to reserve 
server farm space for their little corner of the cloud, even if they're 
only using a tiny bit of it to hold documents until they can get to 
their computer to print from there? When you get a cloud account, 
there's a minimum amount of storage space set aside for you to use (or 
not use) as you see fit. But if a million people sign onto that 
service, then they have to have a million times that storage space 
available, and make it available 24 hours a day, which means keeping 
those serves sucking down electricity even when they're not actually in 
use, so that they are always available.

Just because you don't see the carbon-consequences of something doesn't 
mean there aren't any -- that's the nasty secret the electric industry 
wants us all to forget as they encourage more and more power usage. The 
cloud is no more carbon friendly than printing is.

-- 
David H. Bailey
dhbailey@davidbaileymusicstudio.com

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