Simon

Cumbria

IT

One area they would do well to look at is the reduction in modularity, and hence reusability, inherent in policies such as the HD copy protection epitomised by the hardware design requirements for Vista graphics cards.

No longer can a manufacturer build a modular card with a number of discrete chips - they now have to build all-in-one custom chips. This the potential for dismantling the cards and re-using some of the common items (such as D-A converter blocks) is eliminated.

Added to the requirement for millions of people to go out and buy new hardware, often to replace perfectly good hard that simply doesn't get the "movie insustry seal of approval", this is going to create a mountian of new, perfectly functioning, but scrap hardware.

A second area they could look at is the "locking" of hardware as part of service bundles. The best known is in the mobile phone industry, but it happens in other areas - for example the hardware bundled by BT with it's ADSL lines is customised to prevent it's effective use on another service. This creates another avenue for perfectly functioning equipment to be scrapped simply because of a business policy.