Dell Launches New 24-inch Green Monitor

Recently Dell Launches New 24-inch Green Monitor. One of the biggest places that you can save on your power usage in your home or business is by cutting off devices like TVs and PC LCDs that draw power even when they aren’t being used. Dell has announced a new 14-inch LCD that has features for green power savings.

The display is called the G2410 24-inch Wide Green Flat Panel monitor. Typically, 24-inch LCDs have a resolution of 1920 x 1200, but dell cuts the G2410 back to 1920 x 1080, plenty for full 1080p movies and content. However, the gamer out there will be disappointed by the lack of full resolution.

Still the display is rather cheap for the screen size at $349 and it supports 16.7million colors with a 1000:1 contrast ratio. The panel has a response time of 5ms, a bit slow compared to other LCDs but that should be plenty fast for gaming. Dell equips the LCD with features for power saving called PowerNap and Dynamic Dimming, though the computer giant doesn’t describe exactly what the features do.

Related Post: Dell Shows Its Green Stripes At Greener Gadgets
New Green Cases for Green Computers

Source: http://www.slipperybrick.com/2009/02/dell-whips-out-green-24-inch-lcd/
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Dell Shows Its Green Stripes At Greener Gadgets

Last Friday, at the Greener Gadgets conference in New York City, EcoGeek had the chance to sit down with Michael Murphy, Dell’s senior manager of environmental affairs. Mr. Murphy was at the conference to participate in a panel discussion entitled "Measuring Your Hue of Green" – where he talked about how consumer electronic businesses can lead and are already leading the industry in green corporate practice.

Over the last year, Dell has been embarking on various green initiatives, the most prominent of which was their announcement that the company was, officially, 100% carbon neutral. Some critics questioned this title, pointing to the fact that a large part of that “carbon netural” tag came from carbon offsets. When asked to address this, Mr. Murphy pointed out that Dell’s Austin headquarters were entirely run on renewable energy, as were the offices in Oklahoma City. He said that Dell was committed to running on renewable power wherever it was available, and that the offsets are only for those geographies where renewable power is not feasible.

He also made it clear that Dell’s products rightfully deserved to be called green. One of Dell’s big pushes was to build laptops whose displays used LED back lights. LEDs make a laptop more power efficient, and they contain no mercury. More importantly, though, power-sipping LEDs give what all customers want the most – longer battery life.

According to Murphy, the LED move summarizes Dell’s green philosophy: make a better product, and it will naturally be greener. A green computer is not a computer that skimps on performance. It is a computer that is built out of better materials, in a smarter way, will last longer, and will cost less.

Dell has also been taking steps to consider the overall lifetime of the computer. Dell offers the only free consumer recycling and take back program across the globe, and they also have developed a program called Reconnect with Goodwill Industries. This program not only allows people to donate their old computers rather than throw them away, but also provides jobs for people in the recycling industry. Mr. Murphy pointed out that Dell had become so involved in these recycling programs that they were making changes in the way they designed machines -just so that the recycling could be done more smoothly and efficiently.

Dell is doing a lot. Some may take issue with the term carbon neutrality, or with offset usage in general. But it is clear that Dell is delivering when it comes to leadership. They are not only working to embody green values, but are teaching the lessons of responsibilities to all their partners, at every step in their supply chain. As Mr. Murphy’s put it, Dell is learning a lot by trying to make its own facilities greener, and they see it as their duty to share what they learn with the rest of the industry.

Source: http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/2598/73/
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Zero Watt Green PC Launch by Fujitsu Siemens

Sunday at the CeBIT trade show in Hanover, Germany, Fujitsu Siemens said that it was set to launch by mid-year a PC that uses zero power green PC when it is powered down.

In reality, much like your TV, most computers use one to four watts on average unless it’s disconnected from power or attached to a shut-off power strip. PCs remain “active” for functions such as remote power-on.

Speaking of which, many corporations send updates and the like during off-hours. How would this work, if the Esprimo 7935 system is truly powered down?

Fujitsu Siemens has a setting that wakes the PC during a predefined time slot during which updates can take place. Once that time passes, the machine returns to zero-watt mode until it is turned on.

Realistically, there is no way it can be completely powered down, if it can still wake itself up. However, the way they describe it, they could power the machine into a sub-one watt mode.

According to the company, the PC has still more “greenness,” including a power supply that is 89% efficient and motherboards with no halogen or lead. The Esprimo 7935 meets the Energy Star 5.0 standard, which will come into use mid-2009.

Expect the PC to cost between 700 and 800 euros, or $755 and $881, according to Fujitsu Siemens, when it releases mid-year.

Source: http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/6510
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4 Green Technology Tips That Will Save You Money

Save energy. Save the environment. Save money. Sounds good, huh? Savvy use of technology can help you do all three.

These days it's not uncommon for laptops to serve desktop duty. But here's the rub: If you leave the battery inside the system 24/7, it'll keep drawing power, even when fully charged. That's not only a waste of energy and money, but also bad news for the battery: Constant charging will reduce its capacity to hold a charge and its overall longevity.

Fortunately, there's a fast and simple solution: Pull the battery out. Most notebooks can run off AC power when there's no battery present, so take the latter out of the equation. It'll stay in pristine condition and save you a kilowatt or two.

PCs and landfills go together like oil and water--or, more accurately, like mercury (which can leak out of computer circuitry) and groundwater. Unfortunately, more and more unwanted computers and monitors end up in landfills every year, and the environmental impact is considerable.

Before you consign your unwanted system to the dump, consider giving it new life. One option: Wipe the hard drive and install a Linux-based operating system like gOS, which has such modest system requirements, it makes even a six-year-old Pentium 4 feel like a modern Core 2 Duo. With that done, the system could go to a student, a tech-challenged senior, or anyone with basic computing needs.

Alternately, an aged PC plugged into a router can double as a fine file and/or print server for your home network (see "Get More Out of Your PC"). If you're willing to spring for a TV tuner, you can install free media-center software like Media Portal and turn the old girl into a DVR--no monthly TiVo fees required.

Bills that arrive via snail mail represent a massive waste of resources (paper, printing, hauling, postage) on both the biller's part and yours, if you're still mailing back written checks. Maybe security concerns kept you from switching to electronic bill-pay services early on, but financial institutions have had plenty of time to work out the kinks, so there's no excuse for continued use of paper checks, envelopes, and postage.

Banks do charge for online bill-pay service, but some will give it to you for free if you do enough business with them. If not, take a look at MyCheckFree, which lets you pay many major billers free of charge. Alternatively, set up automated bill pay with the many utilities and banks that will happily collect their monthly fees, credit card, and mortgage payments via direct withdrawal from your bank account.

Game controllers, kids' toys, digital cameras, and other electronics chew through batteries faster than beavers chew through balsa wood. Consequently, they chew through your wallet as well: A four-pack of Duracell AA batteries sells for around $6. Buy just one pack per month and you're out $72 a year.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/01/AR2009030102378.html
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PC Plug Green Solution For Home Computing

A PC Plug? Better believe it. Home appliances are getting above their station today: first we saw a washing machine that shows your clothes in 3D, and now Marvell has unveiled a PC that’s a plug. It may sound daft, but the Marvell PC Plug could be the green solution for home computing - find out why, after the jump.

Dubbed the SheevaPlug, the Marvell PC Plug is the company’s attempt to come up with a green alternative to home servers that have to be left on all the time, running up large leccy bills - this one’s far more power efficient, which ought to alleviate some green guilt.

Specs wise, the Marvell PC Plug is scarily impressive: a Linux OS, a 1.2GHz processor, 512MB of memory and storage practically put it on a par with the original Asus Eee PC, albeit without the screen. You can lash it up to the network with ethernet, and slap on an external hard drive via the USB port too.

With power like that, there’s a lot of scope. Marvell is selling development kits for it, so who knows: it could put Sonos out of business. What do you reckon though? Daft or delightful? Let us know in the comments below!

Source: http://www.electricpig.co.uk/2009/02/25/the-pc-plug-so-green-it-doesnt-have-a-screen/
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QSC gives 65 Green Computers to the Eid Charity

(QSC) handed over 65 Green Computers to the Eid Charity yesterday. The green computer project launched eight months ago aims at utilising computer parts which are discarded by users and recycling them to make new ones.

“The effort was launched with the help of Microsoft and many other companies who had handed over their unwanted PCs to be recycled,” said Hassan Abdula A Al Abdallah (sixth right in the picture), secretary-general, QSC, and the chairman of Green Computer Project.

“In this way we have made computers which are ready to be used as new. 65 of them have been handed over to the Eid Charity. The computers will be given to children who cannot afford computers either in Qatar or abroad,” he told The Peninsula.

The project is environment-friendly as it recycles the various parts of the computer. Muhammad Hammoudi (third left), of Microsoft Qatar also attended the function held at the QSC yesterday.

Source: http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=Local_News&subsection=Qatar+News&month=February2009&file=Local_News200902242248.xml
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British Experts Develop "Green" Software

A team from the University of Liverpool says it's devised a program that automatically shuts down computer systems after usage.

And members estimate it's saving larger organizations the U.S. equivalent of nearly 20-thousand dollars a month in electricity.

The researchers found that universities with PC centers in 24-hour libraries could be losing more than one million hours of unused computer power each month.

Systems experts say new software called "PowerDown" automatically shuts down computers if left unused for half an hour.

Using the University of Liverpool as a test model, the team discovered that 16-hundred (1,600) library-based PCs alone used 20 thousand kilowatts each week unnecessarily - equating to over four thousand dollars in electricity costs.

PowerDown has so far recovered 24 million hours of PC inactivity within the university, say the scientists.

They estimate an average PC left on round-clock but used for only 40 hours a week uses about 17 kilowatts of electricity - of which about 13 is wasted.

That figure doesn't consider other energy usage such as air-conditioning required to remove heat created by active computers.

Source: http://arkansasmatters.com/content/fulltext/news/?cid=194081
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