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That’s an invitation for trouble if I ever saw one.
nice font
Doh! I use a ThinkPad!
You have our condolences!
…you’re not the only one… *sniff* I have the exact same type of laptop shown in that picture… mines just a little older because it’s lost those stickers at the bottom left…
It’s to understand why they kept the obsolete laptop when you notice that they still have an obsolete calendar hanging on the wall right next to it.
exactly! Like this post after yours saying “exactly” only less recursive
Most. Inefficient. Digital. Clock. EVAAAAAAAR!
I weep for the environment. And Seriously, not even the bean counters caught that this thing was draining more funds in power usage than several *years* worth of batteries for a traditional digital wall clock?! Someone’s snoozing on the job.
hear hear
camn down there buddy. Your ona PC right now posting so maybe you need to give up your computer.. and the lights in your home, oh that car you drive dont forget about that. All those good you buy? yep they come from trucks that SHOCKING run of GAS!!!!
I for one am all for keeping the environment clean, however its not YOUR job to tell ME what to do with MY products. Im going to go home and turn on my 1000 watt light bulbs out front of my house, than drive my car which gets 15 miles to the gallon out to dinner JUST because of your stupid post.
Wow. Just… wow.
I’ll go with you PJ!
You’re completely missing their point. The point is that there is no REASON for this laptop to be running solely as a clock. They aren’t saying you shouldn’t use a computer, drive a car, have electricity in your home, or buy things. Furthermore, while it may not be THEIR job specifically to tell you, there are indeed regulations on what you can and cannot do in terms of emissions. If you don’t like what they said, okay, but you don’t have to act like a butthurt six year old by threatening to overuse electricity and burn more fossil fuels. If anyone’s post was stupid, it’s yours.
Most of the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada get their electricity from Niagara Falls (including myself). So your fossil fuel theory is void for over 50,000,000 Americans considering you don’t even know where this picture was taken.
Niagara falls generates around 4.4 GW of electricity annually, which works out to 770 kWh for each of the 50 million people you mention – only one part in 20 of the 14,000 kWh consumed annually per capita in the US, even for those 50 million people. Overall, hydropower accounts for barely 7% of US energy use, while fossil fuels make up over 70%.
So you’re roughly 90% wrong.
Look, either way, can we all agree that:
1) It’s good for people to not overuse stuff when it’s not necessary,
2) It’s not fair to blame average people living their everyday lives for a problem that is a function of our society and how poorly managed (i.e. not democratically managed at all) our economy is?
3) I am from the future.
The computer could conceivably be running a web server, or something of the sort in the background.
Wow, you have some issues that need sorting out.
Wow, that was a pretty immature post. Should we shove millions of dollars down the drain JUST because we have it? It’s not just environmentally dumb, its economically dumb. He was just making a valid statement and you completely blew it out of the water with your childishness. Grow up.
YEAH MAN DON’T HANDS OFF MY RIGHTS TO BE INEFFICIENT WITH MONEY AND NOT BE TOLD WHAT TO DO WITH MY PRODUCTS
^ What these guys above said plus another dozen or so …
Show me where on this Earth is being destroyed by this one laptop and I’ll hunt it down myself and unplug it. Go hug a tree and drink your beans.
You’re using a computer which probably uses more electricity than that one to complain about someone using electricity on their laptop. At least that computer is doing something USEFUL! Lead by example – unplug your earth-destroying computer!
Yeah, but what about all the chemicals, lead and other pollutants that would eventually get into our ground water had they thrown away the laptop and it went into the dump?
The laptop still works, so this is probably better than tossing it in the trash. For all you know, the office could be getting the power by environmentally friendly means, and a laptop has to be fairly energy efficient to run off a battery for 3 hours! Instead of throwing away a perfectly good laptop and then buying a new clock, they simply used the laptop they already had, and obviously no one in the building needed for anything else.
Heh, actually, I did the same with an old laptop with a 286.
However I coded a binary clock for it
Hey, actually it’s not a bad use for an old laptop. Especially if you have somebody with vision problems or alzheimer or such.
In fact, I’ve actually been thinking about buying a used netbook or such and doing the very same thing.
They make clocks with bigger font then what is shows on the notebook which is wasting money and power.
Sure, but have you seen ‘em? Most analog clocks look okay, but some big-number clocks have butt-ugly 3″ high or bigger seven-segment LCDs. (Why do we put up with 7-segment displays at all, by the way?)
This is a relatively small waste of money and power compared with, say, poor insulation in an extreme climate or an old window A/C unit or any of a hundred other common ones. I admit it’s a waste, sure… but, hey, if Al Gore can jet-set around the world and still be taken seriously, what’s this tiny extravagance?
“Why do we put up with 7-segment displays at all, by the way?”
Because if it crashes/freezes, you can tell within a second of watching it that it had.
Actually, there is a way it could have been more efficient…
Some people (myself included) use old PCs as cheap home servers. Laptops are better for this in terms of power consumption, but they leave you with a screen that’s not doing anything. So if you use a laptop as a home server AND have it running a clock (or better still a calender/to do list) then it’s not really a waste of power.
Actually, this would probably serve better if you hacked it into a digital photo frame. There are a lot of how-tos online, it’s a project I’d like to try if I ever come across an old, used laptop.
That’s not a clock. That’s a countdown to when the electric bill comes.
$5 wall clocks that run a year on a AA battery are for suckers.
This. Is. Nerdia!
More like a countdown until the next Windows application error. Reboot early, reboot often!
Like sysadmins, who needs the time when you have the uptime?
RERO
hey !! I find that actually pretty cool. the only thing that’s wierd is the power cable hangin there. you should either try to hide it, or just fix it using duc tape.
I was using this as a wristwatch. It worked really well, but whenever I walked any more than 3 feet from the power outlet, it kept falling off.
2 words: extension cords.
That way you’ll never have to worry about a dead battery.
this gets my vote for best comment! HAHAHAAAAA!!!!!
Wow! I finally found what to do with an ipad… Just have to figure out the safe areas for the nailgun.
just riddle the thing with nails. its oversised and impratical and fun to destroy
What a waste of engery
They are wasting engerys, and they are so rare already that I havent seen a live engery in my town since… well forever.
Is the engery an endangered species, or just listed as threatened?
After using a thinkpad for a year I think its def. better served as a clock…
P.S. – Anyone else find The Ms. Fixit comments pretty lame? I don’t think I’ve ever read one that made me laugh…
Hell yeah, tell him bob_super. How dare you have an opinion Pooch, and the audacity to post it on the internet. Tisk, tisk… Go on bob tell him what a bad taste he has, I am sure he will break down crying. He doesn’t even explain his comments (in brackets).
As soon as he posts his house and sense of humor publicly on the internet, your comment will relevant.
I can’t speak for Ms Fix-it.
But I do appreciate the effort made so that I find -many times a day- a new nice topical picture here. The title and comment are a personal touch.
You’re right that we’re not in “her home” but it’s like the street-side of it, it’s a private area shaped for public viewing, the way she feels is right (and there’s an active effort for it, not having comments wouldn’t prevent pics from showing up). And I, sorry if I’m an exception, don’t go around telling the world -including my neighbors- that their garden is just never right for my taste.
When the clock stops working it can always be used as either a paperweight or leave it on the wall and call it modern art.
Bill never understood technical jargon and doesn’t see the benefits of “overclocking”
I just want to formally appreciate your comment. Hah. That is all.
This is a great caption!
*claps* for comment of unadulterated WIN! Thank you, good sir.
My high school uses them. This is probably all they are good for though. they came with vista and had to have it removed because the hard drive didn’t have enough space to use the laptops for anything.
Needs a second laptop with the current date on it.
I paid $200 for this crap, and all i get is a CLOCK!? O_O
AH, but it’s a Clock running in a Java Application on top of Windows Vista! Surely you can see the value of this application. This is an Energy Star laptop!
OH. Taht maeks me feel aaaaaall better
A clock that comes with a cd drive! Its christmas all over again 
And because it’s running Vista, you can have it play your Music library in the background.. maybe.
Um… No, its not vista, its like windows 200, look at the sticker closely… But still, Music Playing clock! ^_^ Take that, Apple!
I have a music playing digital picture frame with a clock function somewhere, but it’s not nearly as bulky or inefficient. Oh well, can’t have our environment and destroy it too.
Eh. still beats the iPad in price and clock sexiness.
When the clock reaches zero, you got to push the button, brotha
AHAHA! Too funny.
There is a REASON they have a clock next to a calender in a break room. How long do you think the engineers have stayed there? If they didn’t have some way of telling the time, they might never leave…
I’m an engineer and I’m offended by that comment. Now I’ll just continue spending the rest of my time here at work perusing the internet.
A better use would be to use it as a picture frame. Or a mirror, if it has a web cam.
I think it would be better if they put a real picture frame around the laptop. To give it that special touch.
Come on, there has to be more power in that than just a clock, maybe a nice slideshow, and interactive calendar could come up quite easy.
Maybe a cute little animated kitten ‘hangin in thar’ over the time display?
Does anyone remember the cute little sheep that used to trumble over the screen back in the day of 3.1? Would love to find a more current version.
Aha! It still exists and still works (just about) on XP. I have a copy somewhere, but I think you can google it up … just look for sheep.exe or “screenmates”, etc.
That, an auto wallpaper rotater (there’s a squillion out there), and something like BigFreeClock to overlay a large, semitransparent readout (7 seg unfortunately but I bet there’s alternatives), and you’re set.
I hope they kept the battery in, so it doubles as emergency lighting system.
Great idea! Although I don’t think the extra 30 seconds of light will be helpful.
Most power-consuming clock EVER.
Ummmmm….That’s not an obsolete laptop…the one I’m on RIGHT NOW looks just like that one!!! (Thank you linux for speeding my laptop up again!)
A computer’s internals, and therefore functionality can be changed without affecting the exterior appearence.
Sorry I was late. My clock caught a virus.
haha thats pretty good
I did this with an old laptop except I removed the display from the hinges and bezel and put the keyboard in backwards behind it. I built a frame and mounted the display with a white cardboard border.
I have it set to run iTunes at start up and go into a picture rotating screen saver after two minutes. It’s a WiFi digital picture frame that plays music by using the remote app through an iphone, ipod touch or ipad.
I can pull out the wireless keyboard and mouse when I want to change something or RDP into it remotely.
I’m adding a microphone and a webcam to act as a Skype video conferencing station soon. I just have to rework the frame to include the camera.
Okay, and I thought the clock was a good idea. I can’t wait to have an old laptop now!!!
I have one of these old IBMs. Spent a lot of money on a new harddrive when I didn’t know anything, so I have been trying to think of ideas to use it. Yours are great!
Oh but this was wireless too, somewhat. What you cannot see is the Ethernet IrDA port velcro’d to the wall just out of shot. Your walltop sounds nice!
I think when I finally, eventually, one day upgrade from my still-trusty TC4200, I’ll have to do similar. Except in this case, being a convertable tablet PC, it’s built to do exactly that without any mods.
Could even get hold of a replacement pen and tether it next to it to do various simple tasks with (changing the wallpaper settings, uploading new stuff, setting appointments, remote desktopping of a sort, etc)
Hey, you never know. Maybe this thing is also running background software, like serving the company’s intranet pages.
That’s a good idea. When a burglar comes in looking to sabotage something, he will just think the whole place is technology literate while the old wall clock laptop is running the entire office.
“Hey you — stop playing minesweeper on my clock!”
Now I know why my employer gave us T42′s. They must have had a surplus of wall clocks.
I think that’s the same model Thinkpad I used to have. It was a sweet little machine for its time (1998.) Although it’s a little weird to think that I just backed up a bunch of files onto a USB drive that has twice the capacity of that Thinkpad’s hard drive.
Wait… that’s a good idea. I am so doing that next time I have an extra laptop. We could even run the family calendar on it.
At least it is NOT in a landfill!!
But if it’s a first-gen Pentium, the time will not even be right.
didn’t know the P54 divisor bug had anything to do with the RTC…?! still, the core 2 duo on my works desk behaves very strangely if you pull the clock up… its almost like its running to some extremely syncopated beat. four seconds, slightly fast… pause about a second to resynch… and repeat.
if you had/have an old pentium where the time kept going off, that’s nothing more than a drained clock battery. couple of minutes work to swap in a new one, cost about 1.99 and a small ecological loss of a tiny bit of aluminium and lithium.
Do you know where your children are? Oh wait…that’s 10pm.
A perfectly good 200 Watt wall-clock. FTE!!!
change the font color to green and all the whining about power consumption will stop.
I had exactly this model of Thinkpad until about a month ago. It’s not worth doing anything else with. Damn thing took a half hour (literally!) to boot. Might as well get some good out of an old cr*ptop.
Must use more electricity than a regular clock. He is not being green
but saving green 
Very very cool. I have a few old Laptops lying around, I should do this in my dorm.
Why not go the extra mile and have the calendar on the thinkpad too?
Note to self: find this person’s electricity supplier, buy shares.
I was going to do exactly this, except mine would have been a calendar syncing online and would have had a huge wad of duct tape to hold the power jack at just the right angle for the dodgy solder joint inside to make contact (and slowly burn away the traces on the motherboard).
I wanted to do something like this too. An alarm clock with different alarms for different days of the week, have a calendar, weather, basically a very thin Chumby.
Is it running Windows Core? lol
Hey, maybe whe can post other better ideas for older Laptops.
How about donating it to a kid – someone less fortunate than us?
I will probably get blasted for this but……. not being particularly green, I really don’t give a rip. So I have a question for all of the people whining about energy usage:
Isn’t it better to hang it on a wall and have it doing something fairly useful instead of being thrown into a landfill where it can take up space or do something even more damaging (from what I’ve heard)?
I would imagine so. It’s a little like using Cadmium-Selenium (CdSe) photovoltaic cells and burning less coal, you simply move the hazardous materials elsewhere to do something useful where it can be controlled. Throwing an old laptop away is just asking for trouble, whereas reusing it for something else, while it may continue to use power, reduces the material waste and processing energy required to handle the device were it to be recycled or simply thrown in a landfill.
You’d probably have been better off mounting it on two brackets on the wall and using it as a shelf! :p
That’s efficiency! They’re waiting until the paper calendar is used up before they add the calendar function. There’s no sense in wasting a paper calendar.
-Cougar :{)
They should really install that LCARS program that’s on the interwebs somewhere… or some sort of home automation software…
Due to a tragic mishap, the laptop wound up being abandoned at a very young age. It was taken in and raised by a family of wall clocks. The laptop is only trying to make its parents proud and doesn’t know any better. The adoptive parents mean well but haven’t had the heart to tell the laptop what really happened so long ago. Someday, however, it may realize its full potential and go on to accomplish many great things.
Eh, I can dig this. Someone obviously needs to tell them that Clock.EXE still works on modern versions of windows, so you can get a full analogue one with a second hand built right into windows
Used to use an otherwise near-useless old amberscreen 286 with that very application as a clock for my room. An old low-mhz 16 bit processor and a 12″ monochrome CRT don’t actually use much power between them (the PSU fan and ancient 40mb hard disk were probably the biggest drains… never did quite figure how to do the mythical “win 3.1 running from a floppy” trick), maybe 3 or 4x my current 7-seg radio-alarm clock that claims to use but 5w continuous. The slight extra expenditure was worth it for the soothing orange glow … and besides, it was turned off whilst I was out of the house or not using that room much, ie 2/3rds of the time, which doesn’t happen with alarm clocks.
Plus it still did get used for knocking up the occasional letter in MS Works or playing a round of late night solitaire, made all the wierder for the colour scheme and wierd Hercules screen rez.
Hmmm, I’m tempted to pull out my old VGA, win95 laptop and set it up for just that purpose now. It’ll use next to no power after all – the system will be literally idling 99.9% of the time (takes what, a couple thousand clock cycles to increment each digit or redraw a hand?), so if we underclock, install Rain on it and set the HDD to spin down after a minute, all we’re running with any seriousness is the screen backlight and a little extra for the mobo chipset and RAM refresh (pull out all but 8mb of that, also). Which in a device that originally needed to pull 2+ hours out of a NiMH battery pack won’t be more than 5w. So maybe 10w tops when transformer losses and the like are considered. Which is basically a nightlight. Anything below 20w is pretty much not worth bothering about unless it’s truly used 24/7 or you have a lot of them, when there are other (generally but not always) transient loads in a typical house that can measure from a couple hundred (big screen TV, small hairdryer) to a few thousand (oven, shower, heaters) watts. If you feel really eco-concious, make it operate like an oldskool digital watch – have it go into standby (or at least turn the screen off) after a few minutes, and only pop back into life showing the time when you hit the power button/a key/stroke the touchpad. As nothing else is running, it should be quick. Alternatively, go the other way and install Folding@Home on it, so it’s at least doing something useful.
Lappy doesn’t look much older than the one I’m typing this on though, they’ve got some curiously short equipment lifecycles there.
Also I think I just figured out what to do about the funding shortage we’re experiencing for our digital signage project….
Try Puppy Linux, your TP 600 will be reborn.
Great point, Emmy. Maybe we should just try and stop this whole horrid cycle in its tracks and stick the thing in a landfill tip, eh?
Oh, don’t look at me like that! :p
Best use I’ve ever seen for a ThinkPad. They are crap
For everyone complaining about engery wasting, you just wasted energy viewing and typing responses on this useless post.
I like the clock. Mother Nature who?
That looks like my laptop!
I suppose the waste of energy is not a main issue here, there are lots of things we do thant wast energy, I mean, for the love of all thing good, what is the point of television?