ARM or RISC-V based single board computers are becoming a thing. If one needs a small low-power Linux system with a fully-working desktop experience nothing beats those in terms of power consumption. Most of them are even passively cooled and, hence, very silent without efforts.

I’m not suggesting one should use a setup like this daily, mostly commenting on how good the experience still is when running *BSD on it.

At the end of the day if all you need is a computer, it’s nice to know that basically any computer can still be serviceable. In a world where you can get 4k series i5s in the trash though, I don’t actually think anyone will be using such an old Mac seriously.

Seriously, you should see the hardware companies are throwing away right now… i5/7 6xxx computers and up… what a waste. They’re fully functional but they’ve been amortized so thrown away to the landfill and replaced with todays model to be thrown away in 3–4 years.

What an incredible waste.

Ohh.. I've always wondered how to get my hands on this "garbage". The machine I use every day is from like 2013... the fastest PC I own has a processor that was launched in 2014. It's partly because I'm frugal and partly because I don't believe in constantly replacing hardware that works just fine. But it sounds like by this point companies are throwing away stuff far newer than what I use! haha

Depending on where you are, there'll either be local auctions of surplus tech, or eBay / refurbishing stores selling these kinds of things. I always went for Dell Optiplex, but there are HP and Lenovo equivalents too

Yeah, we used to have Free Geek Vancouver here, but they unfortunately shut down recently.

Still, my intent is moreso, well, companies are literally throwing these systems into the trash, so paying for them feels like I am getting ripped off. I'm always hoping for the opportunity to snag a system or two that is being tossed. It has happened before, or I've paid like $5-10 for something that is destined for the dumpster. It definitely seems like a "have to be in the right place at the right time" kind of thing, though.

In Germany, https://www.afbshop.de/ provides PC disposal services, and then sells the reconditioned machines with new hard drives/SSDs. They also have retail shops in some German cities; I bought an HP Prodesk micro PC from the one in Nürnberg.

> energy doesn’t grow on trees

I think this statement may be wrong.

Indeed! I am heating myself exclusively with wood every winter for 10 years now, since I moved to the countryside. Energy does literally grow on trees.

The thing is the fact it can work well on an old imac g3/g4 means you can probably have a decent enough experience on an old raspberry pi 3 or similar or that 30$ laptop with a much more recent cpu and 1G of ram that is also supported by openbsd.

A Mac LC absolutely sips power, you should see how long you'd have to run your $300 mini PC to save enough power to make it worthwhile.

It is kind of neat just how little power some of these older systems used. A big part was it was cheaper to make processors that used non-ceramic caps on them - but it limited the amount of power they could use due to thermal dissipation limits.

A good example in a similar fashion is the Super Nintendo. The power supply is rated to 7.85 Watts but it only uses roughly half of that when running. I believe the Neo Geo used 5 Watts peak. And these aren't physically tiny machines like a Raspberry Pi.

My old Palm Pilot Professional lasted a month on ordinary pen cells. Same with my HP 200LX