Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Microsoft One Step From World's Greenest Company

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the environmental-update dept.

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?

11 of 492 comments (clear)

  1. Good lord! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Install Linux! Pollute the Earth!!!!!1111

    1. Re:Good lord! by molarmass192 · · Score: 5, Informative

      I don't know if YOU'RE trolling, but wtf does "Linux doesn't seem set up to save power" mean? Novell's SuSE Linux comes will CPU frequency scaling and suspend to RAM enabled. My laptop battery consistently lasts LONGER on flights than my co-workers who use Windows. Besides all that, Linux is just the kernel, it has facilities for throttling CPU and disks sleeping, it's up to the packager to use them.

      --

      Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
    2. Re:Good lord! by TheDruidBear · · Score: 5, Informative

      I dual boot my HP laptop and I get 2.5 hrs battery life from my Mandriva Linux side where I get just over 1.5 hours on my Windows side (and the MS side is set to conserve battery life). Needless to say, I tend to stay on the Linux side. Peace Bear

      --
      A stranger is a friend you have not yet met.
  2. It Wouldn't Affect Computing At All by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. Here's my (better) idea. by ceeam · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. Re:Stupid blog entry by Trailwalker · · Score: 5, Funny

    This blogger should lead by example and turn his machine off.

    Permanently.

  5. Did no one realise this one? by forgotten_my_nick · · Score: 5, Funny

    1. Invest in energy companies.
    2. Change software to burn more energy.
    3. Profit!

  6. Home PC/Mac Power Consumption by lancejjj · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  7. Short hardware life is bad for the enviroment by SgtChaireBourne · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
  8. Microsoft is one line of code away from greenest by jdbartlett · · Score: 5, Funny

    Microsoft is just one line away from becoming the greenest company on earth:

    RGB(0,256,0)

    It's like green, but it's "one more" than green. It's the greenest.

    I haven't seen an app this green since I switched from AS/400.

  9. Hey Linux power management is great by Colin+Smith · · Score: 5, Funny

    I've just turned powersave features to ma

    --
    Deleted