Is it RIP for my aged Apple laptop?

OK. I may just have found a very relevant reason to go out and buy a new computer: I think I have officially killed my four-year-old Apple notebook. And, yes, I will lose data if I can't recover the hard drive. And, yes, I am traveling as this discovery is made. Thank goodness for my iPhone and my innate Irish stubborness.

So, here I am, staring at a frozen Apple icon and some stats from IGEL Technology , arguing the case for thin client computing. I wrote about this issue several weeks back, referencing a Forrester report. IGEL's own data focuses less on energy consumption and the costs thereof and more on comparing carbon footprints of various client-side technology. Example: If you swap out a desktop computer for a thin client with terminal server, you can cut the carbon emissions by roughly 44 percent. (You don't save on the display, because both need one.) IGEL makes use of data from the Fraunhofer Institute, which monitors this sort of thing closely. A thin client would also solve my bigger long-term issue, recovering some of my work from the last couple of weeks and all the notes I took at a day-long meeting over the weekend. Anyway, more fodder for the thin client and broader desktop virtualization discussion. Both Forrester and Fraunhofer will make it easier for you to talk lean and green. An added bonus: more central management control. Companies like Pano Logic are working on tighter integration with the server-side virtualization players. The latest version 2.0 release of Pano Virtual Desktop Solution, for example, supports VMware's Virtual Desktop Manager. The new edition was released May 5. Not necessarily something I can use in my situation, but you can bet I'll be thinking quite a bit about energy efficiency and component material if I can't recover this thing.