Green Personal Computing

This section covers a recent trend observed among some mass market devices oriented towards cost and energy efficiency. It may or may not be a viable and durable trend, yet these devices seem to get more and more present

Cost/energy/feature-efficient computers

While a large portion of the mass market computing is increasing hardware needs and multimedia performance, some devices tend to focus on usability, simplicity, robustness and/or efficiency.

Their user interfaces radically diverge from traditional ones (such as the OLPC's Sugar Graphical User Interface, aimed at social interaction, or Everex's gOS aimed at web software).

Real world products and devices

Very low power consumption devices/servers/appliances

These devices consume less than 10W, are mostly fanless (noiseless)

* Zonbu's mini -- 99$ or subscription-based, comes with web storage services (Amazon S3)
* French ISP's Easy Gate
* French Linutop, AMD Geode based -- 429$
* Koolu's "Works Everywhere" Appliance Ubuntu, AMD Geode based -- 299$
* The world's lowest cost thin client? -- 85$
* fit PC, 3-5 W and the size of a papersheet (see specs for more details) -- 295$
* CherryPal: 2 Watts, designed as "cloud computer" (i.e. cloud computing terminal), debian-based OS -- 250$
* Norhtec's MicroClient, VIA ULV based -- 195$

Light, low cost laptops

* Asus' eeepc, ultra light laptop under 300$
* HP Mini-note, HP's answear to the eeepc, around 500$
* Everex's eeepc competitor
* Sear's sub300$ laptop, shipped with commercial Linspire Linux distribution
* The VIA OpenBook, with Open Hardware Design (CAD files published under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License)

Light desktops and laptops

* Wallmart began selling Everex's GPC, which is a full featured, Linux-powered destkop computer priced at 199$
* Small form factor computers vendor Shuttle announced a sub 200$ desktop dubbed KPC Linux PC

High-end, multimedia oriented

* Splitted Destkop Systems: Splitted-Desktop Systems is designing low power, high efficiency set-top boxes which support HD TV, Voice Over IP and Full Internet

Non-profit initiatives

* OLPC, laptop.org
* Pixel Qi aims to produce an even cheaper OLPC

Resources

* Shuttle's $200 Linux PC Part of a Trend? on SlashDot
* Other Everex devices
* Greener Gadgets conference