A couple of friends at work had an interesting conversation last week about the life span of desktop or laptop computers - stemming from one of them buying a desktop for $500 based on the expectation that in a couple of years, it would either break or be obsolete. This prompted his friend to suggests "computers are disposable consumers electronics; they are not appliances that people keep for years. A computer is pretty much only good for two years". This struck me as a pragmatic given computer prices have dropped so sharply in recent years to the point you can get a half-decent machine for a few hundred bucks. The big question is whether PC makers such as Lenovo, Dell and IBM can reduce their costs to make a healthy profit margin from each unit. Of course, the downside of our disposable culture is dealing with PCs that people no longer want. While some of them can be re-used, there needs to be more of an effort put into recycling old machines, and dealing with nasty substances such as lead, cadmium and phosphorus. As much as no one  wants to admit it, millions of PCs end up in small villages in China where their components are salvaged. At the same time, however, these computers caused terrible environmental damage. There has to be a better way.

The New York Times has sparked a lot of discussion about Wi-Fi telephony - the idea you can make a telephone call over a Wi-Fi network when using your mobile phone rather than burning up your mobile minutes. While Mathew Ingram and Om Malik have their doubts (and the mobile carriers will make Wi-Fi calls a technical challenge, if not an impossibility), it is an intriguing idea. In Toronto, you have to wonder the impact Toronto Hydro could make on the mobile market when its Wi-Fi network is rolled out in September? Can you imagine all those business folks in the downtown core using Skype over Toronto Hydro's network rather than Rogers, Telus or Bell? While telephony is a small part of the utility's plan, it's one area that gets Toronto Hydro Telecom CEO Dave Dobbin excited. He made a point of showing off the technology in action during a roundtable while at the Canadian Telecom Summit last month.