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With all of the talk of being “green” in the IT industry, it sometimes seems hard to think that you can be have a green system. Here are some ways that you can be green.

Of course, the most costly (upfront) method is to get a new less power consuming PC. Unfortunately, this may not recoup anything for the individual consumer - even if you run your PCs continuously (at $0.14/kWh, going from a computer that consumes 400W to one that consumes 320W would save only $70 a year).

The only real savings would be in removing a power hungry CRT monitor for a less power consuming flat screen monitor. However, realize that the big savings only start at 19″ or better monitors (again using the formula for a 17″ CRT monitor of 95 watts va a 17″ LCD using 30 watts equals a grand savings of about $20 a year).

So how can you really go PC Green?

For a business with, say, 12 PCs the idea of saving almost $100 a year per PC for upgrading is well worth the look.

Just as moving from individual printers to a more centralized model (the savings in ink, toner, etc. alone is worth the consideration).

One of the handiest ways to also cut down is to consolidate systems and servers. Recently we wrote an article about removing your server altogether which can create significant savings…especially if you can consolidate all the data to a NAS.

Consider turning off your PC (did he really say leave it oiff)! That’s correct….you heard it here: leave it off at night.  There is a great article at Coding Horror that speaks well to the savings of leaving PCs off.

Many people speak to components failing by turning on and off the PC, but remember that the only items with real “moving” parts are the hard drive(s), CDs and cooling fans (and hard drives are designed with them being powered on and off regularly) so you other components are relatively safe from being turned on and off.

This link at the U.S. Department of Energy provides some good tips to utilize the power management features within Windows 2000, XP and Vista.

IMPORTANT NOTE: When using remote services (RDP, GoToMyPC, LogMeIn, etc.) you should only use the monitor features as most remote programs will not “wake” remote hard drives powered down by power management.

Being PC Green will take effort for both the user and business and while it seems the business is the biggest benefactor, the individual should consider that the average “home” pc lasts 5-7 years versus the 3-5 year lifespan for a business PC. At just $90 a year (minimum savings) you’ll save $450.00 or more than half the price of a new PC.

For a business, saving over $1000.00 annually (also assuming 12 PCs with $90.00 minimum annual savings) could become a justification to a phased upgrade to more energy effiecient PCs.

The bottom line is that with increasing costs for energy the relative small savings of a more energy efficient PC become a more attactive option.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 12:17 am and is filed under Contributors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.