Windows 7: Why Microsoft’s energy-saving claims don’t add up | Fred Pearce
Microsoft's low-light mode doesn't earn it the right to claim its new operating system is eco-friendly You will have spotted the ballyhoo by now - Microsoft's new Windows 7 operating system is out today . And, rather as when Microsoft launched Vista three years ago, the company is trumpeting its energy-saving credentials. Windows 7 offers "more than just lip service" on eco-friendly features . Microsoft is not making any specific claims about how much power Windows 7 can save, though in a demo for journalists in California recently, a laptop playing a DVD achieved 20% more battery life with Windows 7 than with Vista. Microsoft's coyness is fair enough. The energy gains depend too much on the interface between hardware and software . Instead, it claims to offer green-minded consumers more options. When running Windows 7, individual users can more easily decide how bright they want their screens , for instance. And corporate IT departments will be able to run power-efficiency diagnostics (pdf) to optimise the operation of PCs within their networks. That is all to the good. Choice is important. But you have to wonder how many IT departments will take the trouble to explore the energy-saving possibilities of the new Windows when, according to Francois Ajenstat , director for environmental sustainability at Microsoft, "probably 70% of business users leave PCs on at night." First things first, you might say. Arguably Microsoft should be giving its users rather fewer choices and rather more shoves in the direction of using their machines more efficiently. Take the screen. The biggest energy user for most PCs and laptops, it typically consumes 40-50% of the power. As one of Microsoft's engineering blogs puts it : "The easiest way to save power on a desktop PC is to reduce the display idle timeout to something very aggressive, such as two or five minutes". So the best way for Microsoft to use its software to improve power efficiency would be to set an "aggressive" timeout as the default setting.
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Windows 7: Why Microsoft's energy-saving claims don't add up | Fred Pearce
Which laptop is the most eco-friendly and ethical choice | Leo Hickman
Is the world's greenest laptop made by a household name such as HP, Dell and Apple - or a small cottage manufacturer? Please can you tell me what is the most environmentally/ethically friendly laptop? I want a portable model (as opposed to desktop replacement) with a 15 inch screen for word processing, photos, watching DVDs and an easy connection to internet. I have about £500 to spend. Sarah Garcia, by email Thanks for the question, Sarah. I will endeavour to tackle it next week. It sounds like you are seeking an energy-efficient netbook from a company that has a good record when it comes to issues such as e-waste and worker rights. If anyone has any advance thoughts or tips on the subject, please do email me , or post your comments below. Energy efficiency Carbon emissions Ethical and green living Computing Gadgets Leo Hickman guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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Which laptop is the most eco-friendly and ethical choice | Leo Hickman
Supercomputer in the firing line over carbon footprint
It's impossible to ignore the irony that the Met Office supercomputer dedicated to modelling climate change has an enormous carbon footprint. But critics just miss the point In the past I've written about the internet's energy footprint , and raised the question of whether we should consider ways to drastically reduce the power consumed by data centres as our lives go increasingly online. So it was with more than a little interest that I read this story about the Met Office's weather-predicting supercomputer - and how, ironically, it has a pretty big carbon footprint. According to a study by the Department of Communities looking into the footprints of public buildings around the UK, the £33m IBM cluster produces up to 75% of the carbon emissions from the Met Office's HQ in Exeter. That means it's responsible for a good deal of their annual output of 12,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide - one of the highest totals in the country. It's an easy headline, of course - and probably feels particularly sweet for those who revel in poking at climate change scientists (and they are certainly a vocal group). But the delight in this irony is also driven, in part, by the misplaced assumption that a climate scientist would think that all carbon emissions are bad. Are all CO2 emissions equal? Well I'm certainly happier to see carbon being spent solving the world's biggest problems than ferrying people around the globe for business meetings they could do through teleconferencing. And, of course, it's all relative in any case. Supercomputers in the past used vast amounts of energy to run, and were extremely primitive by comparison to today's beasts - on a visit to the Museum of Computer History earlier this year , I saw an old IBM machine that used the same amount of power as a small town but had just a few KB of memory. The Met Office machine hopes to be able to run at a Petaflop soon - that's 1 thousand trillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) calculations every second. The truth is that while the public rarely thinks about supercomputers - except, perhaps, when there's a chess game at stake - these machines do amazing work that is impossible to replicate elsewhere. These are the machines that fold proteins, that crunch data from particle accelerators; they are the sort of machines that could help cure cancer - or, in the case of the Met's cluster, save thousands of lives by accurately modelling a climate-related disaster. It's worth thinking about. Computing Carbon emissions Carbon footprints Bobbie Johnson guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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Supercomputer in the firing line over carbon footprint
Why it is greener to dump your old laptop than donate it
The claim that donating old computers to charity is the greenest option is just wrong As Fred Pearce noted in his greenwash column last week , Dell is banning the export of electronic waste to developing countries . The move will be welcomed in many quarters. But an even more positive step would surely be to keep our computers in circulation longer by passing them on to someone else – or so we are often told . Besides bridging the digital divide, the rationale for donating computers for reuse is that it is supposed to be greener. Even before a computer is switched on for the first time, as much as 75% of its lifecycle fossil fuels have already been consumed in manufacturing it, not to mention around 1.7 tonnes of raw materials and water . With half a million PCs disposed of globally every day and nearly half a billion mobile phones discarded each year , it stands to reason that giving your old laptop to someone who needs it is one sure-fire way to curb emissions, save precious resources and help the developing world in the process. But in passing on our PCs, we need to also take into account an additional cost that is often overlooked or ignored. Besides the emissions an individual PC is responsible for, there are the subsequent e-missions – the greenhouse gases incurred by the internet itself. In 2007 the world's computers, monitors, telecoms networks, routers and the data centres that keeps the internet running carried a carbon mouse-click of 830m tonnes of CO2 . Even by the industry's own conservative estimates, that's the equivalent of 2% of all global greenhouse gas emissions for that year, putting it on a par with the aviation industry. At the very least this is set to grow by 6% a year, with the biggest growth coming from the developing world.
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Why it is greener to dump your old laptop than donate it
Gadget boom sends electric bills soaring
Growing love of computers and plasma TVs could soon account for nearly half our electricity bills Britain's addiction to power-hungry gadgets could raise electricity bills by £100 per year for every household and hamper progress in meeting the country's greenhouse gas emissions targets, according to experts. The proliferation of plasma televisions, high-end PCs and mobile phones is causing energy consumption to soar. These devices currently account for 25% of the electricity used by UK households and projections by the Energy Savings Trust (EST) show this will rise to around 45% by 2020. Per household, this means an increase in energy use of 1,000kWh per year at present, to 1,700kWh in 2020 and, at today's electricity prices, this will cause a jump in bills from just under £140 per year to £237. Around the world, the energy consumed by information, communication and consumer technologies will double by 2022 and triple by 2030, according to a study by the International Energy Agency (IEA), to a total of 1,700 terawatt hours. This is equivalent to the current combined total domestic electricity consumption of the United States and Japan, at a cost to households of around $200bn in electricity bills and requiring the addition of approximately 280 gigawatts of new generating capacity between now and 2030. "This could be a serious situation for the world if the manufacturers of these products don't get their act together and start taking energy efficiency seriously," said Paula Owen, of EST. In its report, the IEA showed that in the next seven months the number of personal computers around the world will pass the one billion mark. Although electronic devices account for around 15% of the global household electricity use, that share is rising. There are almost two billion televisions in the world, an average of 1.3 sets in every home with electricity, and more than half the world's population subscribe to a mobile phone service. Owen said that as well as an increasing number of gadgets, the desire for bigger versions that can do more things has increased power demands. "As new models of these gadgets come out, they tend to do more
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Gadget boom sends electric bills soaring
Greenwash: Fujitsu’s ‘wind-powered’ laptop is powered by the most expensive green energy in the world, writes Fred Pearce
Fujitsu promises to buy 'green energy' to offset the emissions from the energy use of each of its new 'wind-powered' laptops. But consumers are being asked to pay an extortionate price for carbon-free guilt Every green should have one – the world's first wind-powered laptop . The idea of a little turbine plugged into a socket on the side is intriguing, even if the truth is a bit more prosaic. A lot more prosaic. In fact, to buy this machine you'd have to be green according to the definition preferred by my old dictionary. That is, "gullible". For this is probably the most expensive green power in the world.
Leo Hickman on how green is your computer
Internet users got their ethernet cables in a twist this week when they learned that just two Google searches could emit as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as a kettle boiling enough water for a cup of tea. A Harvard physicist, Alex Wissner-Gross, was reported as saying he had calculated that each search produced 7g of CO2, due to the huge number of energy-hungry servers and data centres used by the internet giant. It might not sound a lot, but when you consider that more than 200m Google searches are made every day it soon adds up. Over a year, it broadly compares to the output of a nation such as Laos. Many suspected the figure was wildly overcooked and Google itself responded by releasing its own calculations that put the carbon footprint of a search query at 0.2g of CO2
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Leo Hickman on how green is your computer