Deutsche Telekom has its very own software download business, called Softwareload. It has also commissioned research that to show that junking hard copy software packages in favour of direct downloads could reduce the carbon footprint of the world’s software industry by 80 per cent.
“The ‘physical copy’ figure was attained by environment consultancy First Climate and was calculated accounting for transport and production factors throughout the supply chain typical when producing standard sized CD-ROMs (including manuals). The download figure was achieved using metrics such as server and computer power consumption. When comparing the two, CO2 emissions for downloads were proven to be 80 per cent lower.”
We know how good it feels to hold something tangible when you shell out money for software, but lets face it, the manuals are close to nonexistent these days (a one paragraph summary in 7 languages don’t help much, and you usually lose the disks before you need it to do a reinstall.
Regardless if the real number is 80% or a smaller number, we have to agree that downloads are the way to go, but hold onto OS, and office disks and anything worth more then $100.