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140

The environmental impact of CD is worse than I thought - make including CDs / DVDs optional.

140 points posted to Environment by jmxz 08/23/07

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/08/why_we_love_dow.php

every month in the United States some 100,000 pounds of CDs become outdated, useless or unwanted. Every year, more than 5.5 million software packages go to landfills and incinerators. He notes studies that calculate that a kilogram of greenhouse gases are generated for each CD produced, packaged and delivered.

In the software biz, every $100,000 spent on commercial software reproduction creates the global warming potential of approximately 29 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents as well as 38 kilograms of toxic waste. We would add that most of the software on CD's is obsolete and in need of updates as soon as it hits the shelves.


I have never ever ever used any of the CDs and disks that Dell sent me every time I bought a Dell computer - and I expect for 90%+ of Dell customers that's true as well.

Make it an option - so only people who really will use the discs get them.

[EDIT: - an improvement to the idea came out of the comments below. How about pre-load the .iso image on the computer and document that if you want the images you should burn them yourselves?]

davmcn
08/23/07		 Use Flash sticks!!!!! or make that stuff accessible by going on the dell site.
jmxz
08/23/07		 How about pre-load the .iso image on the computer and document that if you want the images you should burn them yourselves?
jorge
08/23/07		 Semi Dupe, but still good! (guess who's you semi-duped :) )
davmcn
08/23/07		 Yah jmxz good idea...
davmcn
08/23/07		 Good Thinking.
wing044
08/24/07		 I find the driver disc least useful. It outdates quickly as new driver versions come out and there is no point using it in reinstallation.
jmxz
08/24/07		 @wing044: "I find the driver disc least useful."

And that's why the Idea was to make it optional so that people who do find them useful can get them. The driver disc doesn't do much for me because those drivers don't work on the OS's I use.
presto_fabien
08/27/07		 sure, it is really useless for all people who already have 10 version on windows at home (all of them legal of course) and always an internet connection setup on one pc to download drivers needed after a reinstall... but for most of people who have one computer, no other cd than the cd shipped with the computer, how they do to reinstall windows if they don't have a reinstall disk. how they get an internet connection if they doesn't have the driver disk (even outdated) to download all other drivers?

the option is good, if no extra cost or checked by defaults and a big warning if you uncheck it.

the most common dell user is not a geek....
jmxz
08/27/07		 @presto_fabian: "the most common dell user is not a geek...."

Indeed - and those users won't be able to do anything with the driver disk even if they have it and will panic if you tell them "reinstall windows". Perhaps some system builders or repair shops would benefit from Dell letting them download such driver disks - but for non-geek users I bet less than 1 in 100 ever do anything useful with the disks Dell sends.
 
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