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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?
Please disable "screen saver" feature altogether. DPMS sleep modes work much, much better for "screen saving" (and screen saver of course do not save energy at all). Flying shits and "nice" landscapes may be kinda fun for a first time but that time ended about 20 years ago. Oh, same applies to all unices and macs of course. I have colleagues who have screensavers running on there PCs/laptops for _days_ (as on weekends) and monitors never go to sleep. Sigh.
Of course wasn't it Microsoft that implemented all of the power down features because it took so long to boot Windows in the first place that people didn't want to wait so long for the computer to power on? Wasn't it also the bloated Windows code and feature creep that made it necessary for ever faster cpu, ram, video and storage requirements, which all equate to more energy consumption? Isn't also true that Microsoft Vista is going to tax these resources even more? So, isn't it a bit hypocritical to talk about how "green" Microsoft would be by forcing computers to power down?
Maybe a better solution would be an OS designed to run on lower powered devices from the start instead of trying to make the high horse powered PC of today more efficient. As an analogy, although there have been improvements with technology, an eight cylinder automobile is not going to ever be as fuel efficient as a four cylinder one. Nor will a four cylinder be as efficient, say as a fuel-cell powered one. Likewise, as long as the system requirements to just run Windows (not even applications on Windows) keeps increasing, the PC will continue to consume greater and greater amounts of power.
We all know, even if we don't want to admit it, that personal productivity for the business masses, anyway, has ceased to improved, at least significantly, from the latest releases of Windows. Why? Because of those 600 million computers quoted in the article, most are used for things like word processing, simple spreadsheets and surfing the web and to do email. Stuff that computers capable of running Windows 2000 and Office 2000 (if not earlier versions) still do quite well. Sure new versions make it easier to get pictures of our cameras and to create music, etc. But the vast majority of people aren't seriously doing that work and those that are, use specialized tools, anyway.
Now, many will argue, and I would agree, that hardware is cheap, relatively, anyway. However, the point of the article was not about cheap hardware, but about saving energy. And the point of the matter is that as long as we keep adding fluff and flash to the OS, forcing bigger and faster computers, which translates into greater power consumption, they will never be "green." Even if they do power down when not in use, they will still use far more energy than is needed to actually perform the task while they are on.
If Microsoft wants to truly be known as a "green" company, then they should design the next version of Windows so that it runs on less hardware than what is currently required, so we don't have keep to filling up the landfills with technically good computers that become obsolete, just to stay compatible every time Microsoft releases the latest version of Windows.
In my experience (building and selling PCs), most users are not forced to upgrade hardware because of microsoft. Most are forced to upgrade because of their own ignorance. Their old computer becomes so clogged and bloated with spyware and other crapware, that it is slow and useless. My most recent example is a 1.6ghz system, with windows XP. It was barely usable. When asked to fix it, I said that the entire system needed to be "rebuilt".....and returned to like new condition. The price I quote for this job is $150, assuming the user will handle installing their printers, setup, etc.... This user, and all others, then just go buy a new computer because they don't want to stick $150 into "this old slow thing". I then buy their old slow thing from them for $50, turn around and sell it for $250. BTW, XP runs fine on a 500mhz system, it is the 3rd party software that is the problem, not MS.
Summary: The old computer is still being used, Microsoft didn't cause the problem, the upgrade cycle is more complex that originally obvious. Even at my employer, hardware is on something like a 6 year cycle, sometimes more. Even after that, most of the machine is recycled when the recyclers will take them.
A while back I bought a laser printer. It had a suspiciously good bang for the buck considering that it could do double sided printing. The box said "Optimized for Windows" on it. No problem, a printer is a printer is a printer. Plug it in, fire text at it, and the text winds up on the paper. Fire a few special character sequences at it, and graphics come out. So what if it has drivers that make that process especially efficient in Windows. Anyways, I brought it home, set it up, tried to get my Linux box to print to it, and failed. I tried redirecting text to /dev/lp0 without success. I rebooted the machine into DOS and tried printing from there. No dice. Yet the printer's status pages would come out no problem. A few hours of Googling educated me on a new class of abominations - "winprinters". Mindless zombie hunks of metal and plastic that cannot perform their designated function unless Microsoft Windows is pulling their strings and laughing maniacally. Sorry, no drivers for Macs, or Linux. Windows only.
I brought this abomination back to the store. They were going to refuse to take it back, because I had unsealed the toner cartridge. I pointed out that the box said "Optimized for Windows", not "Exclusively for Windows", or "Must be slaved to a Windows machine, because it isn't really a printer". Fortunately, there was a nice Samsung printer with Tux emblazoned on the side (along with the Apple and Microsoft logos) that was the same price, and the sales guy let me swap. Otherwise I would have been stuck with a $1200 paperweight.
Microsoft may not be a monopoly in the strictest sense of the word, but they are a monsterous company that wields enough power that other companies are willing to lie to, and cheat, their own customers just so they can put the magic word "Windows" on their box.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I agree that originally, this was tainted money, in the ways Microsoft originally made it, but I don't think the Gates foundation is a front for more manipulation. I think this really is from his heart, maybe with an occasional nudge from Melinda.
2 9/k.CC2B/Home.htm
If Bill Gates was just milking his donations for maximum publicity or leverage, would he have picked the causes he has? He could focus totally on those medical causes that matter most to the industrialized world, for example. He could avoid all the more politically controversial causes out there. When it comes to willingness to let the chips fall where they may, I'd say the Gates Foundation compares favorably to two of the biggest alternatives, the MacArthur and Ford Foundations:
http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.8552
http://www.fordfound.org/
(Info on both the Ford Foundation's Sexuality and Religion divisions, and the MacArthur Foundation's Copyright law related work is accessable through these links. The latter may be of special interest to many Slashdotters. Both programs are examples of a foundation not shying away from doing what it thinks is right for fear of alienating business partners, funding sources or sections of the general public.)
Mr. Gates could increase giving to Europe, where Microsoft has had the most trouble, and he could focus on causes that are likely to be dear to the very politicians that have pushed hardest for fines. He doesn't appear to be doing this.
Bill Gates could also just about ignore Africa, or at least give a much smaller percentage of totals there, and still reap the same sort of publicity. Instead of his saying that computers aren't what's needed first in developing nations, he could encourage someone else to pay for more hardware everywhere, just so he could 'give' away lots of software and count that in press releases as donations worth the full retail value, even though it would actually cost him very little. His whole computer initiative goes exactly the other way. The Gates foundation only pushes computerization in areas developed enough to have libraries and similar locations, and actively avoids treating computerization as a solution where basic infrastructure such as reliable food sources, roads or water filtration are more pressing needs. They also avoid pushing computerization where political stability is suspect or obviously lacking. They don't support 'computer in every classroom' or 'every student's home' type programs, and they do pay for both machines and networking, including some pretty long haul wiring runs.
Who is John Cabal?