When it comes to computers, any hardware over two years old is considered middle-aged and anything over five years is considered ancient. Updating old computers is an expensive endeavor, particularly for business, and it's even more painful for nonprofit organizations or school systems with limited budgets. And the cycle of exchanging old electronics for new, after just a few years, increases the amount of e-waste that's shipped overseas or dumped into landfills.

"If you could break that pattern of planned obsolescence, you would generate huge savings, not just on the economic level, but from an environmental standpoint as well," twenty-five-year-old innovator, Jonathan Hefter told a New York Observer reporter.

Hefter has an idea to do just that. He's created a way for people to use an older model computer as a "virtual desktop," outsourcing its processing power, memory and operating system to another piece of equipment located down the hall. The so-called "juicebox" -- the size of a pizza box-size -- is capabl;e of powering hundreds of terminals on a cloud-based network, and can be updated for a fraction of the cost of updating those hundreds of terminals.

Hefter founded a company for this hardware-saving venture: Neverware. The name, as he told, was chosen "'Because with us, [consumers] will never have to buy a new computer again.'" An autodidactic technologist (his degree is in economics), Hefter created a prototype of the virtual desktop on his own in less than a year. He began working to start up Neverware in New York with Dogpatch Labs, an entrepreneurial incubator, until just recently; Hefter now works on the project with education technology organization Startl.

A simple and elegant idea, can the technology behind Neverware really be that incredible? Hefter claims he could transform a setup of 160 traditional PC's in a school into a Neverware system that powers all the computers with just two juiceboxes. An entire system updated with no dangerous e-waste, and all for $20,000? In this case study (also from the Observer article), HP replaced all 160 PC's with newer models for about five times as much money -- with two tons of e-waste. And as we've all heard repeatedly, that's some of the most hazardous waste on the planet. So I, for one, hope Hefter's solution is truly as remarkable as it sounds. He's up against every hardware manufacturing giant out there, but with economics, logic, and bucket loads of Earth-lovers' warm fuzzies on his side, Neverware might prevail.