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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?
Then don't buy sub-standard hardware. And don't blame software for faulty hardware. MS is changing a bunch of defaults that 99% of people won't care about, the 1% that do can set them to whatever they want, and overall we all use less electricity. So what exactly are you complaining about?
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"The upgrade would adjust the machine's energy-saving settings for maximum efficiency. Of course, this upgrade would have to allow critical systems to opt out. Nobody wants air traffic control computers to suddenly go into deep hibernation. But correcting for critical systems should be very simple for a company that churns out millions of lines of code every year."
Wow, this paragraph made me soil my jeans. What's scarier: a) critical systems running Windows, b) critical systems running Windows connected to the Internet, c) critical systems running Windows connected to the Internet accepting patches from Microsoft, or d) trusting Microsoft to let anyone opt out of anything.
"Correcting for critical systems should be very simple for a company that churns out millions of lines of code every year." HA! What are you smoking? Microsoft has no way to know which systems are critical. And Microsoft doesn't have a wonderful track record with patches.
It's very frightening to think that c) above could actually exist, but unfortunately it's probably true.
Sheepdot: Open Source good, Closed Source baaaaaaad!
I agree! Every new Windows upgrade has also required a system upgrade. Vista requires a Gig of RAM and a CPU over 1.4GHz to run happily I believe.
PC makers are currently stock-piling shiny new systems in anticipation of the big release day. (Anybody else notice the recent increase in RAM and HDD prices?)
Personally I run several old Linux boxes. My PC at work is a 120 MHz relic with 64MB of RAM, running Damn Small Linux with Firefox - perfectly adequate for surfing the web for semiconductor datasheet pdfs.
Nope, Microsoft is THE most un-greenist company on the planet IMHO. So folks, if you really have to upgrade to Vista and then find yourselves having to upgrade your PCs, don't bin your old box. Install Linux on them and hand them down to your kids, relatives or give them to charity or something.
Please don't throw working, perfectly usable PCs away. Thanks.