Consider the computer from an off-worlder's perspective. With the enormous amounts of resources needed to make the average PC, a visitor from another star system might find it illogical that most of the units we produce are obsolete within five orbits of our sun. But when you realize that manufacturers are perennially under the gun to come up with boxes that offer twice the performance and features of last year's models, at the same price, you understand how they get trapped on the "ship, bill, landfill" treadmill.

So let's apply Star Trek wisdom to develop a new business model. For one thing, much like the cast of characters on that long-lived series, the key components inside your computer remain pretty much the same for long periods of time, with seasonal changes to the supporting players. It seems wasteful to chuck a computer's case, power supply, display, storage subsystem and internal components when the whole unit could be upgraded with a handful of chips. Heck, the Enterprise was always being upgraded, and it took something like a Klingon raid or a warp core breach to force the captain to request a new model.

So, suppose that when you bought a computer, you also got a guarantee that it could be upgraded to meet your needs for the next five to seven years. You might get a postcard in the mail 18 to 24 months after your purchase that advised you of upgrade options, or you might have already subscribed to a service that would keep your machine at current for a fixed annual fee. Once your machine could not be upgraded any further, you could turn it in for a new or reconditioned unit while your old computer either was refurbished and resold or efficiently recycled.

While manufacturers would end up selling fewer new units than under the current business model, they would make much more money selling high-value upgrade kits that would require less energy, fewer materials, less pollution and lower cost to make. Further, manufacturers would not have to slug it out with the competition every two to three years, as they do today. And this business model would address Europe's looming product take-back requirements.

Mr. Spock would likely see the logic in this proposed model as applied to computers and some other big-ticket items we currently treat as disposable. If only some visionary would "make it so."

Write me at lgoldberg@green-electronics.com.

Lee H. Goldberg reports on technology and the environment at his web site, www.green-electronics.com.