Microsoft One Step From World's Greenest Company

An anonymous reader writes "According to this article, Microsoft is only a few lines of code away from becoming the greenest company on Earth." From the article: "Redmond should issue a software upgrade to every computer running Microsoft Windows worldwide to adjust each machine's energy-saving settings for maximum efficiency." The author figures that the upgrade would affect 100 million computers and that the power cost savings could hit $7 billion per year. CO2 emissions would be cut by 45 million tons. But what about the impact on computing?

Comments

Spare us the uninformed babble, please

[Zigg]

What a phenomenally stupid idea. I have personally used a half-dozen machines where enabling "power-saving" is a recipe for operational disaster. Machines that power off completely. Machines that lock up. Machines that do something and never come back.

I think the lack of foresight on TFA's part with this inane suggestion reflects pretty accurately on how seriously we should take the article as a whole.

Re:Spare us the uninformed babble, please

[Mayhem178]

Imagine the laughs if a new car was brought out which required the engine to be on all the time - because if you turned it off you cannot unlock the doors.

You just described every server on the market.

I know that I would not want Microsoft fumbling around with the power saving settings on my Windows 2000/2003 Server (if I had one) computer just because they think they know what's best for consumers. I mean, we've already seen this mentality from them on numerous occasions, and how many times has it resulted in something useful? WGA protecting the consumer? Bull. How about how any Microsoft product update automatically resets the application in question to be the default application of that type (e.g. anything in Microsoft Office)?

Now they want to muck with power savings settings through an update. Sorry, I'm gonna pass on that one.

It Wouldn't Affect Computing At All

[Anonymous Coward]

People who need better performance would change the settings. The vast majority of people don't need better performance. The vast majority would be okay (performance-wise) running a slightly souped-up C128 with GEOS and the Wave.

Even more power savings

[Enderandrew]

I've seen server rooms that run off DC and have substantial power savings.

Google suggested a new standard for ATX power supplies that is supposed to have again, substantial power savings.

There are solutions out there without a doubt. Big businesses would save money on their bills.

So why is no one interested in saving money?

Bueller? Bueller?

Re:Even more power savings

[Anonymous Coward]

Because most businesses have a hard time seeing past the initial cost differential of buying a DC server vs. an AC server, nevermind the cost of making your server room DC rather than AC.

Not sure about the ATX power supply, but I have to say that most of the equipment in most server rooms (remember that Google uses biege boxes, rather than vendor specific servers) don't use a standard ATX powersupply anyway - the form factor is way different, even if the output voltages are the same. That would cost a fortune to change out for most companies too. And in this day and age of "where's the profit?" you will be very unlikely to convince anyone to spend money now to save it in a couple of years.

How exactly?

[chrismcdirty]

How would this make Microsoft the greenest company? As far as I can tell, it wouldn't. It would make the companies that use MS products greener companies. It would have nothing to do with the net energy that Microsoft uses.

Re:Greenest?

[tgd]

While dropping the monopoly word in here is a sure fire way to get modded up, it just amazes me that a community of people who run two, three, or more different OS's, on different hardware platforms cry monopoly at every chance with Microsoft but do not when they are complaining about being stuck with a 3mbit cable modem, or unable to get bare copper lines for DSL back in the day, or even able to get FIOS TV because their town granted a monopoly to the local cable company.

There are REAL monopolies impacting people in the US vastly more than the anti-Microsoft brigade seems to understand.

Its a very myopic view of things.

Not that easy

[khendron]

Can you imagine the support nightmare Microsoft would unleash upon themselves if they did what the article suggests?

Articles like this underline a huge problem in the software industry. Too many people think that software is easy, and that all any problem needs is a few software tweaks. Too many people are willing to offer up solutions without thinking the issue all the way through.

It is attitudes like this that lead to failed billion-dollar IT projects, most of what is offered on the Daily WTF, and VB hacks promoting themselves as software engineers.

Home PC/Mac Power Consumption

[lancejjj]

I figured out that my PCs were consuming more electricity than my fridge, dish washer, and clothes washer. Combined.

I made a chart of actual electricity use of various PCs and Macs on my blog: PC and Mac power consumption.

In a nutshell, my annual power consumption went down by 30% (!) once I started to power down my home-built "home server PC" when not in use.

I also figured out that when buying a new PC that is going to see a lot of use, power consumption should be a factor. If you're saving $100 in purchase price, but spending $50/year for additional electricity because the cheap PC's power supply is grossly inefficient, well, have you really saved anything if you keep that machine for 3 years? The short answer. NO.

Short hardware life is bad for the enviroment

[SgtChaireBourne]

Hardware is toxic and energy intensive to produce and to dispose of. MS pushes a short hardware upgrade cycle, aiming to get its customers to make new hardware purchases every two years or so. Remember not only do later versions require newer hardware, eventually out-growing old hardware, most of MS' income is from Windows sales and nearly all of that is from OEM sales. Thus, MS is economically dependent on a short life span of units with unreasonably large ecological footprints.

Say the ecological footprint of hardware is the same over time.

• A 3 yr cycle, instead of a 2yr, is about a 30% reduction in ecological impact
• A 4 yr cycle, instead of a 2yr, is about a 50% reduction
• A 5 yr cycle, instead of a 2yr, is about a 60% reduction
• A 6 yr cycle, instead of a 2yr, is about a 70% reduction

You get the idea. Or ...

• A 4 yr cycle, instead of a 3yr, is about a 25% reduction in ecological impact
• A 5 yr cycle, instead of a 3yr, is about a 40% reduction
• A 6 yr cycle, instead of a 3yr, is about a 50% reduction

A 3, 4 or 5 year hardware cycle is perfectly reasonable, unless the software/operating systems gets so slow and bloated that performance suffers. Or unless the vendor stops supporting the software or operating system and their is no way to get third party or home grown support. So, MS-enforced hardware upgrades are definitely not green.

Anyway, the blog (it's not a real article) is way off base about energy consumption. Shame on /. for pushing MS' hype.

MS' coding practices make the company un-ecological: As the blog points out, currently, most MS machines get left on 24/7 (or as close to that as possible) to allow crackers to get in -- I mean to allow the system administrators to push out patches on "patch tuesday" or whatever it's called now.

Turning the machines off would also make them invulnerable to exploits, at least for the duration of the inactive period. Wake-on-LAN is an underutilized feature and could allow that. But it has nothing to do with any specific operating system.

spyware is just another symptom

[SgtChaireBourne]

Hmm. It seems that the thriving ecosystem of spyware, viruses, worms and trojans is also the direct result of MS' coding practices. Or perhaps to be more precise because of fundamental design flaws in the product. Either way, the problem is not the user, but the vendor.

But that does bring up a very important second point. The "re-format and re-install" mantra has the effect of reducing competition because of the difficulty in auto-installing third-party software on MS-Windows. Unlike Red Hat's kick start or Debian's APT, the third party apps have to wait until they can be installed manually. In that case, especially for large scale sites, the IT dept decides it's too much work to go for best of breed and knuckle under to convenience. Even if they do go with third party apps, time limitations (lunch, meetings, end of shift, project deadlines, etc.) may intervene and prevent completion of installation of the third party apps. With 10's or 100's of millions of PC's, just shifting the frequency a small amount means large numbers of units.

Using a system which is not prone to spyware, viruses, worms or trojans and does well with low system requirements is also an option for many. Power users and hard core gamers may have trouble. Some, a surprisingly small number, of business apps may cause trouble. But low-tech users who just surf or e-mail or play music will do just fine and may not notice.

So there are three choices there:

1. toss the spyware machine and buy a new one - an ecologically bad choice
2. re-format, re-install and genuflect to Chairman Gates' photo - a choice that damages the free market
3. upgrade to Linux, BSD, or something that extends the effective life of the hardware - a change which some users may not notice, but which may traumatize gamers and powerusers