Advent Eco PC
6th December 2008
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The Advent Eco PC makes some bold claims over its environmental impact. So when they offered to send one over for me to test out, I was eager to put it through its paces and see just how ‘green’ it can be.
Advent is a part of the Dixons Group which are behind the UK’s largest electronics stores including Currys and PC World selling exclusively through their online and offline shops. The Advent Eco PC launched a couple of months ago with a startlingly high price point at £600 for the base unit. However, as I write this review, the online price for PC World without the monitor is just £440 – not bad value considering what it’s got.
The Eco PC is made of an all aluminium chassis consisting of 75-percent recycled material which makes for great recycling at the end of its life. The metal exterior also helps to vent out the heat like a large heatsink for the components inside. With a fan-less design, ventilation is crucial in keeping the core components such as the CPU at a reasonable temperature. Without any fans inside, this also means that the tower can run considerably quieter than its desktop counterparts. When idle, the only thing you can hear is the hard drive spinning. With a design that is no taller than an Xbox 360 but a little bit wider, it is very compact. The design is simple and finished in a not so inspiring black.
Inside, you’ll find a Core 2 Duo 1.5GHz with 2MB cache running on a 667MHz bus. It’s nothing to write home about but when you’re looking at energy savings then having a less power hungry CPU helps to minimise energy consumption. However, if Advent really wanted to take things further with the ‘green’ initiative, they could have opted for an Intel Atom chip which would have reduced the energy consumption even further.
Vista Home Premium ships pre-loaded on to the machine and is running on 2GB of DDR2 RAM and a 160GB SATA drive. Advent has gone for a 2.5-inch SATA drive that is typically found in notebooks purely to crimp a few watts of energy and the ability to cram in to a smaller chassis without too much concern over heat. You’ll also find a slot-loading optical drive for DVD and CD reading and writing. In my testing, I did find the optical drive to be somewhat noisier than typical slot loading drives, even when you’re just running DVD’s from it.
Around the back of the machine, you’ll find a DVI connector which can be converted to VGA using the included adapter, S-Video, Serial, four USB 2 ports, Ethernet, PS2 mouse and keyboard ports and audio ports for connecting up a surround sound system.
Included in the box is a wireless keyboard with an integrated trackball mouse which makes it perfect for using on your lap in the living room. Although I didn’t find it to be all that comfortable to type on for long periods of time. This is down to the squashing of the keys together and odd locations for some of the keys. Of course you can plug your own keyboard of preference via USB.
I was a bit puzzled as to why a wireless keyboard of this form was included since none of the marketing behind this machine is intended for it to go in to the living room. I think most people would have been happy with a wired full size keyboard for the purpose of comfort.
In my experience of using laptops from companies like Advent, I was expecting a bunch of shareware and junk to be pre-loaded. Whilst it’s not completely immune from trial software, things have improved. The result is a nippy machine that gets around basic tasks such as browsing the web, working on documents and managing your photo collection very well. Included in the price is Microsoft Works which handles the basics of the full Office productivity suite.
To further save on carbon emissions, the Eco PC ships with very minimal packaging and documentation. The manuals are all stored digitally on the machine. You’ll also find that the backup image for restoring your computer is also stored on the hard drive although a physical copy can be made using your own media.
The energy tests show that the Eco PC consumes just 50 watts on full load and as little as 24 watts when idle. This is significantly lower than most desktop machines which will typically consume as much as 105 watts. PC World believes that at the current energy rates, the Eco PC will cost you roughly £8 a year to run when compared to a machine using 105 watts which will cost more than £43. These figures are based on an average of four hours use per day. These figures alone wont persuade you to go for the Eco PC because if you did the sums it will take you a considerable number of years to get your investment back. The point of this machine is to minimise the environmental impact through minimal power consumption.
Whilst it’s not going to win any awards for being a top performer, for the ‘green’ conscious of you out there who are looking to do their bit then the Eco PC might be ideal. Just as long as you don’t expect to do more than general computing tasks for home users who are only interested in using it for the internet and menial tasks such as word processing and photo management.
9 comments
25 watts and 50 watts is impressive. but how does that compare to notebooks?
That’s basically a notebook in a desktop case. If you consider the price of a tft display even the total cost is about the same. You can’t expand it more than you would expand a notebook, also, because the small custom case.
The only advantage I can see over a notebook is the fact you can hook your own (supposedly bigger) display. Of course in the latter case the power consumption of bigger monitor+central-unit will be heavier than the typical notebook though, defeating a bit the purpose.
It’s good as a desktop because it’s quiet, and it doesn’t have a polluting battery. Otherwise I would reccomend just to buy any notebook computer to pursue the same performance, quietness, and power efficiency.
Gianluca has a point about it essentially being a notebook in a desktop format. But what he fails to mention is that most notebooks are made of plastics that eventually end up in a landfill and decompose in to the nasty chemicals that organisations like greenpeace are trying to eliminate in products. This is why Apple have made a bit of a fanfare over the use of aluminium and elimination of toxic chemicals in their machines. Sure, this is probably more expensive but then most ‘green’ or ‘organic’ things are.
You’d find it hard to find a notebook that claims to be as eco friendly as this machine. I certainly don’t see any mention of it in the highstreet or online stores. Buying a notebook is not the same as buying this eco pc.
The plastic from notebooks are hardly anything to be worried about. It’s the heavy metals that are used in the tiny components of all machines that are worrisome. Just drop your broken and used laptops at a certified electronics recycler if you’re worried about that. Make sure that the company recycling them does it in a developed country instead of shipping them off to a third world country to be picked apart by children.
Also notebooks typically consume FAR less power than this PC, and that’s including the screen. On battery, my Dell Vostro 1400 uses between 10-20 watts surfing the web with the screen at 50% brightness. My travel sized power adapter is only rated for a maximum of 60 watts.
This machine is basically just branding, aka greenwashing. Here’s a comparison of other fairly common machines with standard setups: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/Atom-Athlon-Efficient,1997-5.html . This ‘Eco-PC’ only performs marginally better or worse than those computers, it’s hardly a standout example of being environmentally friendly.
You got Engadget-ed if there is such a thing. I’ve just been reading some of the comments that have been left here and on the Edgadget site and most of them seem to be negative or cynical, which I’m not entirely certain why. Are we all automatically inclined to be sceptical about energy claims or the ‘greenness’ of any product?
What I’ve noticed is that most do not mention that the case for the Advent is made of 75% recycled material and they try to say that a notebook has better energy savings because of its screen. Well of course! A smaller screen would use less energy! If you’re going to connect up a 30-inch LCD to it then you’re not going to be saving the world. I can only presume that most people will either hook this machine to their existing screen or if they were to buy one, then most people are going for 20 to 24 inch displays. But then you’re just comparing oranges to rocks. A bigger display is a better experience so people should stop using that as an argument.
The Tomshardware link above shows that the most efficient machine they got benchmarked has an Athlon 64 2000 and even then its running at 39 watts with max power of 42 watts. I’m pretty certain that the Core 2 Duo, even at 1.5GHz will trounce an Athlon 64 2000 for performance. The Core 2 Duo at 25 watts idle and 50 watts max output is significant despite what people are saying.
Why is there an Apple screen running macosx at the back
@IgorAb: That’s my display connected to my MacBook Pro.
We are buying this at the moment; PC World have a deal on for £399 for monitor, base unit and keyboard.
I am considering buying this. Can the motherboard handle up to 4GB RAM if I choose to upgrade?