Green IT Toolkit

How green was my Vista?

Tags:
Green,
Vista

Andrew Donoghue ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 28 Feb 2007 10:47 GMT

...new sleep options will let businesses wake machines to install security updates, while letting them remain in the power-saving mode the rest of the time. IT managers can also have more central control over power management with Vista via a group policy tool. Microsoft has claimed that by putting six PCs to sleep, businesses can save the same amount of carbon emissions that would otherwise require an acre of trees to be absorbed.

Power management is a welcome innovation, but it doesn't compensate for the amount of energy and other resources needed to make a whole new world of computers. In many cases the discarded machines will be perfectly serviceable, but just not able to run Vista. Millions of machines discarded for an OS that has seen the vast majority of its unique features abandoned in the development process — and one whose main claim to fame is that it's prettier.

Trying to slap a thin veneer of green around the Vista brand probably seemed like a good plan to Microsoft and PC World execs, but this particular marketing strategy seems to have backfired. Vista may be a lot of things, but green is not one of them. Likewise, PC World, which is depending on the power-hungry OS to be a success, seems an unlikely candidate for the kind of creative thinking required to create a genuinely sustainable PC.

Arguments over marketing aside, the fundamental problem with the PC World announcement is that the sustainable PC is not one product — it's a strategy. We all own a sustainable, green PC — it is the one we use every day. Keeping hold of it for an extra year or two would do as much or more for the environment than creating an entirely new green PC. Getting to grips with the existing power-management systems and learning how to use the off switch on existing systems would do likewise. Online tools — such as Google Docs — are reducing the need for gargantuan local applications and the operating systems needed to run them. This does move some of the problem to the immense server farms that host remote applications — such as Google's plant in The Dalles — but that is another issue and one that virtualisation and economies of scale can affect.

We do need a cleaner, more sustainable generation of computers to upgrade to, but that will require cross-industry co-operation rather than what may be the best intentions of one reseller. Until that happens, learning how not to upgrade may sound trite and unrealistic, but it's the only real quick-fix available for anyone serious about implementing a sustainable IT strategy.