Intel says buy a PC to boost recovery

There's no better reason

The truth is though, the best thing about a quad-core chip on the desktop is for most of the time three cores can be switched off, saving power. There's simply more power in the chippery than most people will ever use. When Craig Barrett introduced the Pentium III in London over ten years ago, he showed real-time 3D modelling, which he said was enabled thanks to the new MMX extensions. MMX got a mention again yesterday for some reason.

Intel really hates me saying it, but how many home users a decade later are modelling in 3D? Is there anything you can do with a brand new chip that you can't with one that is three, four, five years old? Well, barely. Run a virus checker and four or five other apps at once? Hurrah!

In reality, there's no decent reason to upgrade now or in the immediate future. The future's online and in the cloud and you can get at it with a phone. Gamers might still demand the biggest and most powerful rigs, but it's more a question of bragging rights than necessity. The GPU is more important here.

Equally significant is how we think we should relate to our crumbling natural environment in the future.

Sundberg from Microsoft made a point of highlighting how green is the Vole, saying Microsoft is now locating its datacentres "near dams" in order to "be more responsible in terms of the environment". Coo!

A truly environmentally-friendly approach would be to say, Stop! Stop buying junk you don't need. Stop pretending you need a NASA-sized computer in your front room. Stop pretending it's better for the environment to dump the PC that's done you proud for the past four or five years in favour of a more efficient model. The power saving will take many, many lifetimes to offset the environmental cost of the new kit.

And the argument we should buy a new PC because economic recovery is on the way? Pull the other one.

Go plant a tree instead.