Energy Efficient

Going broke on new energy efficient appliances to save money and the environment is now a thing of the past. At the Bloomington Salvation Army, all minds were focused this afternoon on saving energy.

Area residents attended this Energy Fair looking for information to go "green." Organizers say about 100 people came out to learn how to reduce their energy usage.

"There are a lot of other things you can do to save energy that don't cost a lot of money sealing up your windows, wrapping up your water heater, turning your water heater temperature down things like that, that will save energy without really costing you money in the process," DeAnna Belz with the Ecology Action Center says.

This is the first energy fair hosted by the Ecology Action Center. The EAC is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing environmental education to McLean County residents.

Source:week.com
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Asus’s P5E3 Premium Green Motherboard - Energy Efficient

Many companies went green last year, and Asus is being more innovative on their Green initiative. Asus’s new P5E3 Premium motherboard uses a new solution to make it more energy efficient - this solution is called ASUS EPU (Energy Processing Unit).


By throttling processor power consumption, the EPU saves over 80 percent of power usage. The P5E3 Premium also features Asus Express Gate mini OS, which allows users to access the Internet almost instantly without having to boot into the full operating system installed on the computer.

The board is based on Intel X48 chipset and comes with 802.11n draft wireless. It supports DDR3 2000Mhz and dual PCI Express 2.0 x16 lanes. Asus priced the P5E3 Premium at $369 and should be available at the end of February this year.

Source:slashgear.com
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Tips to Maximizing Performance in the Green Computing Trend

With attention shifting from strictly performance to performance with energy efficiency, performance-saving measures are needed now more than ever.

Below are the some tips to maximizing performance:-

1. De fragment hard drives: A primary and extremely common barrier to performance is disk file fragmentation, in which files are split into pieces (fragments) in order to maximize disk space. Regular defragmentation is vital and is performed at most computer sites. With today's enormous disk capacities and file sizes, however, attention must also be paid to the defragmentation technology. Scheduled defragmentation, in most cases, can no longer keep up with ever-escalating fragmentation rates, and sites would find greater benefit from a defragmenter which runs constantly and automatically, in the background, with no impact on system resources.

2. Increase memory: Today's operating systems and applications are, in common parlance, resource hogs, and they'll take as much memory as you throw at them. Hence, it is always worthwhile and will always boost performance to increase memory to the maximum allowed for a particular machine.

3. Make sure anti-virus and anti-spyware programs are installed, running and up-to-date. Viruses and especially spyware can work insidiously, unseen inside a computer, drastically hindering performance. Of course, if not caught, viruses can do much worse than hinder performance, so it behooves everyone to insure reliable anti-virus and anti-spyware programs are installed and running.

4. Reduce number of running programs. Checking over servers and especially user systems, how important is it that all those programs are running? Any running program will be chipping away at precious system resources, especially CPU and memory. It behooves computer sites to implement policies and restrictions on applications to be run, and to periodically check running applications to see how necessary they really are.

5. Install faster hard drives: Another sometimes unseen hindrance to performance is hard drive speed. Although the hard drive is still the weakest link in terms of speed, gaining all possible speed from drives, especially those most frequently accessed, can assist in the fight for better performance.

Green PC, Green Products, Save Energy, Recycle PC

Source:tmcnet.com/usubmit/2008/01/31/3242641.htm
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Greenpeace applauds Apple, MacBook Air

Greenpeace today applauded Apple for the release of its new MacBook Air laptop, calling the device "a winner" and a strong entry in the race to build a green PC. The organization commends Apple's decision to ship a mercury and arsenic-free laptop, which Greenpeace says exceeds European Standards and raises the bar for the rest of the industry. Apple is on the right track, according to activists, and needs to make environmental leadership the theme of all of its products -- both old and new.

"For us though the highlight of the show, was Steve talking about the environment in his keynote speech for the first time," Greenpeace said. "It's a big step for Steve and we would like to congratulate all the Apple fans who helped us with our greenmyapple campaign."

Jobs in early May published an open letter to the public to discuss Apple's then current and future environmental concerns. The letter came after criticism came from environmental organizations as well as company shareholders. The executive promised to remove the inclusion of toxic chemicals in Apple products, and outlined a revamped recycling program for iPods.

Greenpeace lauded Jobs' open letter, praising his decision to phase out polyvinyl chloride and brominated fire retardants (BFRs) by 2008. The organization still criticized Apple's planned recycling program, however, because it will only apply to U.S. residents.

Today Greenpeace commended Apple as well as Jobs, but reminded both that its MacBook Air is not entirely free of hazardous chemicals.

"Had [the MacBook Air] been [free of hazardous chemicals,] it would have made Apple an ecological leader," the organization said. "We can almost taste that Green Apple, unfortunately it’s not ripe yet."

Source:ipodnn.com/articles/08/01/17/greenpeace.applauds.apple/
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HP Unveils Solid-state 'Green' Desktops

HP and Intel have teamed up to unveil a line of energy-conscious workstations.The companies showed off two new PCs, the DC 5800 and the DC 7800, at a special event in San Francisco recently.

The machines are designed for maximum power efficiency, and offer more efficient power supplies and software to better manage auto-shutdowns.

A notable feature on the DC 7800 is an optional 16Gb SanDisk solid-state hard disk. The drive will add $300 (€204)to the cost, but offers faster boot and load times and improved power efficiency.

Kirk Godkin, senior product manager at HP, told reporters that he expects solid-state drives to become a mainstay of the company's PC offerings by 2010, when chip prices fall sufficiently to make the drives practical.

The new PCs also feature Intel processors with vPro remote management tools. The processors will work with Surveyor, a tool which allows network administrators to gauge power consumption on large networks.

HP plans to have a version of Surveyor for small to medium sized businesses within a month. The new PCs form part of a larger environmental effort by the two companies. Other elements include more efficient data centres, better recycling initiatives and new building materials.

The recycling programme has been hampered, however, particularly with government regulations.

Carl Eckersley, of HP's Personal Systems Group, told reporters that electronic waste and recycling efforts have been slowed by different laws throughout the US.

Eckersley pointed to the recent WEEE laws in Europe as an example of how electronic waste could be regulated. "The Europeans are as advanced as anybody, "he said.

Source:techcentral.ie/article.aspx?id=11710
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Lenovo PCs Go Thin-n-Green

If 'small is beautiful' was the mantra in the desktop personal computer business, it is time to add another: 'Thin and green is in.'

Chinese PC maker Lenovo has built on the IBM legacy it inherited, by created what is possibly one of the thinnest, smallest, quietest — and least power-hungry desktop platforms on offer. The A 61e ThinkCentre launched in India this week, has achieved the highest ‘Gold’ status of the industry’s Green Electronics Council — rating based on energy efficiency as well as 90 per cent recyclable parts and packaging.

Versions begin at Rs. 15,800 ( monitor excluded) and are configured with a choice of AMD processors: the dual core Athlon 64 X2 or the mono core Sempron. The footprint is 8 cm width by 27 cm length by 17 cm breadth and the machine weighs in at just over 3 kg. Memory is selectable from 512MB to 8 GB and the hard disk is 80 GB. Different models run Windows 2000 or Vista Buiness.

"The A 61 e is our signature eco-friendly and energy-efficient desktop," said Lenovo India’s Executive Director, Transaction Business, Anil Philip. It strengthens the partnership with chip maker AMD, whose dual core processor used here takes just 45 watts — less than an average incandescent light bulb.

Source:hindu.com/2008/01/27/stories/2008012754301300.htm
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HP Introduces Energy-efficient Business Desktop PCs

HP today announced two new energy-efficient business desktop PCs, including the industry?s first to feature a solid-state hard drive (SSD), which offers improved reliability.

Both the HP Compaq dc7800 Ultra-slim Desktop PC with SSD and the HP Compaq dc5800 Business PC provide the power and flexibility to meet the needs of most any business. In addition, they include a variety of environmental features that allow them to meet the most stringent environmental requirements of the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT?) Gold registry.

The two PCs Add to HP?s industry-topping number of Gold-listed products in the EPEAT registry. The registry helps businesses evaluate, compare and select technology products based on their environmental attributes, such as meeting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency?s latest ENERGY STAR? energy-efficiency requirements.

While using more power-efficient PCs can help any business save on energy costs and reduce the environmental impact of their technology, the effect across an enterprise environment can be immense.

Source:ad-hoc-news.de/Aktie/12718191/News/15117815/ERSOL.html
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