Cheap Green Computer runs on 2 Watts

As far as green gadgets go, this little desktop computer will give Dell and (to a lesser extent) Apple a run for their money.

The CherryPal promises to be affordable, efficient, and powerful enough for the average PC user. At first glance, that stats on the system look modest, and for good reason. This design actually cuts out 20% of PC components to reduce energy usage. But fear not, despite being small (the size of a paperback), the CherryPal claims it can start up in 20 seconds, and cloud computing provides more power/storage when you need it. A Linux operating system (now more user friendly than ever), and cloud computing means you won’t need to worry about viruses or install protective programs that can slow down your PC.

On a more green note, the CherryPal is supposed to sell for under $400 (monitor, keyboard, etc. not included). It should hit the market on August 4th, 2008. For that price and low energy use, it will appeal to wallets as well as the environmentally conscious. Though there is some understandable skepticism, I’ll praise any manufacturer that lowers the bar on PC environmental impact.

I recently took a blow to all of my electronics in the same week (Murphey’s Law at work), so it’s nice to see alternatives on the market. I’ll definitely have my eye on this cute little computer that thinks it can.

Source:cleantechnica.com
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HP Pitches Green printers, Samsung Green Hard Drives

Samsung promises that its EcoGreen F1 hard drive will consume about 50% less power than traditional hard drives and about 15% less than “other low-power” 1 TB hard drives. The company did not provide the exact specifications, but assumed that Samsung considered the 13.4 watt maximum power consumption of its own 1 TB hard drive as well as Western Digital’s Greenpower hard drives, which claim to consume at least 4 watts less than other 1 TB hard drives, our math would put the Samsung drive into the 7 – 8 watt maximum power range.

The reduction in power consumption is mainly a result of a slower platter rotation speed (down from 7200 to 5400 rpm). Samsung also has an advantage in this field as the company is able to reach 1 TB capacity with only three platters (334 GB) each, its rivals Seagate and WD use four (250 GB) platters. Interestingly, within this group Samsung’s mainstream 1 TB hard drive is the most power hungry drive: Samsung claims the drive consumes somewhere between 5.4 (idle) and 13.4 watts (seek), while Seagate for example rates its 1 TB hard drive at 8 to 11.6 watts.

Samsung said the EcoGreen hard drive will become available during the current quarter with a suggested retail price of $199.

In unrelated news, Hewlett-Packard (HP) announced a far-reaching eco-initiative mainly targeting its printer business. Besides a carbon footprint calculator (which is also offered by Xerox) and a printer power calculator, HP said it has implemented a “global paper policy”, which is governing the sustainable manufacture and use of paper HP sells to customers.

HP said that it will aim to improve the energy efficiency of its ink and laser printing products by 40% by 2011 and will begin bringing power saving technologies such as its auto-on and auto-off feature to its LaserJet series in 2009. Additionally, the company will advance its program to use recycled materials to build new printers: 83% of the total plastic weight of the new Deskjet D2545, which sells for about $45, are made from recycled materials, according to the company. Later this summer, HP green printer are really good and energy efficeient, HP plans to introduce this summer a printer that will feature recycled plastic derived from the company’s "closed loop” plastic recycling system, which incorporates a variety of post-consumer recycled plastics, from HP ink jet cartridges to water bottles.

Over time, the company will put “Eco Highlights” stickers on its printers, which HP says will help customers identify environmental attributes of a product.

Source:tgdaily.com
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Dell Gets Green Gold Star from 80 Plus

DELL was blowing its own green trumpet today, as the firm announced its server power supplies had met an industry target of 92 per cent efficiency at 50 percent load.

The company is apparently the first in the industry to get gold certification from 80 Plus, an outfit which promotes more electrical energy efficient computer power supply units.

80 Plus certification lets manufacturers and customers compare various power supplies using criteria laid down by international standards outfit, Energy Star and Climate Savers Computing Initiative.

According to Dell, not only do its power supplies get a ‘gold star’ from 80 Plus, they also met July 2009 Climate Savers targets for servers, over a year ahead of schedule. Earlier in June, Dell also became the first major computer manufacturer to receive an 80 plus silver certified power supply for the company’s desktops. This latest achievement, the company says, is another brick in the yellow brick road to ultimate green-ness amongst its tech rivals.

Dell has apparently taken on a quest to become the first firm in the tech industry to totally cancel out its global carbon impact by the end of this year. The company reckons it is already saving over $3 million a year and cutting down on almost 20,000 tons of CO2 through power-management programmes and greener facilities.

The firm has also pledged to make laptops and desktops up to 25 percent less power guzzling by 2010, compared to its current offerings.

Source:theinquirer.net
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Dell Launches Energy Efficient Green PC

Dell has come up with its latest Vostro green PC for small businesses called the Vostro Energy Smart 410 Desktop. The latest in a series of energy efficient computer products and initiatives designed to drive customer savings, the Vostro 410 saves customers up to 47 percent in annual energy costs, claimed the company.

The Vostro 410’s features Intel Core 2 Quad, 512MB Nvidia GeForce, 800MHz sys memory, space for four hard drives + 3TB of local storage/memory, six expansion slots, four bays, gigabit Ethernet, 30 day return policy, and no bloatware at all.

"Small businesses are increasingly concerned about rising energy costs," said Frank Muehleman, vice president and general manager, Dell Small and Medium Business. "With the Energy Smart Vostro desktop, we're able to save our customers money and collectively cut down on CO2 emissions, while delivering the features and functionality they require - especially high-performance processing power, graphics technology, fast networking and maximum expandability."

In addition, Vostro customers can also take advantage of Dell’s new services portfolio, ProSupport, which gives them the ability to customize and tailor services to fit their technical expertise and business needs. With growing demand for mobile technology among small businesses, Dell also recently announced its refreshed line of Vostro laptops.

The Vostro 410 carries a price tag of USD 599 and is available worldwide.

Source:sda-india.com/sda_india/psecom,id,22,site_layout,sdaindia,news,23547,p,0.html
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Sony Launches Green TV

Sony's new flat-panel TV Bravia KDL-32JE1 consumes less energy than comparable regular models without compromising image quality -- the latest in Japanese manufacturers' efforts to woo buyers with green products.

The 150,000 yen (US$1,400; euro900) Bravia KDL-32JE1 goes on sale in Japan on July 30 and is planned later for overseas markets although dates and other details aren't decided, Sony Corp's Emi Nagahara said on Tuesday.

In a demonstration at Tokyo headquarters, a watt-counter attached to the new 32-inch Bravia consumed 82 watts of energy to show a Blu-ray disc image of a Spanish city on its liquid crystal display.

Sony achieved the energy savings by developing a brighter back light and better filtering that delivers light more efficiently, officials said.

Compared to an old-style TV with a cathode-ray tube monitor, the new TV consumes about 70 per cent less energy a year.

By consuming less energy, the new "green" TV reduces carbon dioxide emissions totaling 79 kilograms (174 pounds) a year, equivalent to the amount consumed by about six cedar trees, it said.

Consumers also save on their utility bill. In Japan, the green TV delivers about 4,300 yen (US$40; euro25) savings in electricity payments a year compared to an old-style CRT TV, Sony said.

"We think ecology is going to become an important standard that consumers use in choosing products," Nagahara said.

Source:infotech.indiatimes.com/Personal_Tech/Sonys_green_TV_/articleshow/3136428.cms
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Wipro Eco Energy to offer consultancy services

Following the launch of Eco Eye initiative, which is related to green PC revolution with eco-friendly activities, IT major Wipro Ltd is all set to provide consultancy services through its newly-floated arm, Wipro Eco Energy. A team has been constituted which is set to offer its full services by this year end.

According to SA Sudarshan, vice-president, Wipro Eco Energy, (division of Wipro Ltd), the company would be offering consultancy services which would be bundled with the existing services. ''We are looking at offering consultancy services to corporates by becoming their partners and leverage our experiences to reduce carbon footprint,'' he said. For this initiative, the company is looking at customers which are energy-intensive industries, off-grid locations and institutes which consume more power.

Wipro Eco Energy is looking to build a core team of talented professionals with experience in renewable energy technology like solar, wind turbines, biogas and biofuel, geothermal space.

As part of its Eco Eye initiative, Wipro has developed a framework for ecological sustainability. It aims to become carbon neutral, build green data centres, launch greenware PCs, eco-friendly product engineering designs, e-waste disposal service and water treatment solutions.

Incidentally, Wipro Technologies has announced its membership in 'The Green Grid', a global consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems. The initiatives extend from energy efficient data centers to eco-friendly product engineering designs and PC ranges.

These data centers provide Wipro's customers end-to-end services for better utilization of their capacity, thereby helping enterprises to minimize their use of power, cooling and housing equipment, which cause greenhouse gases. The data centers apply practices such as server virtualization to minimize the amount of equipment required for operations.

Meanwhile, the company has about 2.5 million sq.ft constructed space currently. This is likely to be increased to 4 million sq. ft and 10-12 buildings of the company are expected to go green. Further, as part of its financial accounting norms, a report on Carbon Disclosure Programme (CDB) is expected to be ready by the end of December.

Source:http://www.financialexpress.com/news/Wipro-Eco-Energy-to-offer-consultancy-services/325186/
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IBM Toes the Green Line With Energy-Efficient Modular Data Centers

Big Blue announced today that it was introducing a suite of new energy efficient technologies and services to help businesses struggling with surging costs and tougher sustainability requirements. The big push is for “modular”: IBM will sell miniature versions of its data centers that come pre-assembled and cut energy consumption in half.

Its offerings will include:

* An enterprise-class data center, standardized to between 5,000 square feet and 20,000 square feet to help managers bring new installations online faster

* A portable data center, which comes equipped with all the standard features and can be packaged inside a shipping container

* A “high density zone,” a system that can easily be swapped into an existing data center to supplement its cooling and power capabilities.

It’s all part of Project Big Green, a $1 billion plan the company launched last year to develop technologies that improve the energy efficiency of data centers. In an interview with VentureBeat writer Chris Morrison, Cisco’s VP of green engineering, Paul Marcoux, said data center managers were worried about rising costs, risks and their growing energy needs. The cost of electricity has increased 30 percent over the last five years, he said, and is expected to grow another 30 percent within the next 2 - 3 years. By 2020, it could be 2.5 - 5 times what it is now, placing the imperative on IT-heavy firms to look for new technologies.

Virtualization software is one of the most promising technologies for energy-conscious data centers, as it allows a small number of computers to handle multiple jobs or functions, significantly reducing energy use. To support such technology, IBM has also unveiled several new server optimization and integration services that can be used with VMware’s popular virtualization software to enable higher use rates, up to 60 percent, and reduce the number of servers needed.

With this announcement, IBM is joining a fast-growing sector — with startups like Altor Networks, ScaleMP and VirtualLogix and established players like Microsoft locked in fierce competition. In recent months, Microsoft has acquired Kidaro, a desktop virtualization firm, and Sun Microsystems has purchased VirtualBox, a German PC virtualization firm. Red Hat recently claimed that its Linux software reduced energy use by up to 12 percent over Microsoft’s Windows Server 2008 software on identical hardware.

IBM also unveiled two other new offerings:

* Cool Chips, a system designed to boost computer chip performance and reduce chip energy use by cooling them with tiny rivers of water

* Green financing software for its Global Financing division to facilitate the management of businesses’ green data center projects.

With these products, IBM hopes to tap into the emerging energy efficiency sector, which has yet to see large gains despite its potential. A report by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient America recently estimated that energy use could be cut another 25 - 30 percent over the next 20 - 25 years.

Source:venturebeat.com
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