The Greening of the PCs: What does it mean to us?

The Greening of the PCs: What does it mean to us?

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): Green happens to be my favorite color. Perhaps
that's also the reason I like singing Tom Jones' ever popular
song, Green, green grass of home. And today, while we in Jakarta
seem to be voraciously making our surroundings grayer and grayer,
people in other parts of the world have been finding ways and
taking real actions to create more green in the places where they
live, work and play.

The results? They have so many things labeled "Green"
nowadays, including their PCs. Green is the color of the decade.

However, so much is to be expected from all these greens.
Undoubtedly, all the greening movements have been the result of
the obligation we all feel and share for leaving our children,
grand children, great grand children, and their great grand
children with a habitable planet to live on.

Hence the Green PCs. While in the U.S. and western Europe
green PCs have been around for more than a year, here in Jakarta
we're just beginning to see them. Acer, for instance, has just
started marketing its version of Green PCs. HP has also labeled
their very reasonably-priced VL2 PCs green, too. Now, what does
it actually mean for a PC to be green?

First, a green machine consumes only a minimum amount of
electrical power, both when working and when idle. Borrowing the
idea from the notebooks and sub-notebooks that use batteries, a
green desktop PC will go to sleep when it has been idle for a
pre-specified period of time. It will instantly wake up the
moment you touch the mouse or press a key on the keyboard.

A green monitor, such as my long-time favorite Nanao Flex
Scans, will switch itself into the sleep mode and consume only 8
percent of its total power consumption while in this mode.

"Hey,", you would probably protest, "isn't it what the screen
saver programs, such as Berkeley Software's After Dark, have been
doing?"

New AcerView

No, it isn't. A screen saver program will only turn the entire
screen to black or will luminare different areas of the screen
alternately, but the monitor will still be using the same amount
of electricity -- typically between 30 to 150 watts. On the other
hand, monitors with auto-sleep function, such as the new
AcerView, will go to sleep and drop the level of power consump
tion to reportedly .5 watt.

Normally, Green PCs are indicated by the label "EPA Energy
Star compliant". In case you wonder what it means, EPA stands for
"Environmental Protection Agency". This U.S. federal agency has
been behind the issuance of a set of specifications, called
"Energy Star", that require a computer and a monitor to reduce
their power consumption to no more than 30 watts each when they
have been left doing nothing for some time.

The most important question is now, does it cost us, the end
users, anything for Energy Star compliance? The answer is, it
shouldn't. The price of green PCs should be the same as -- if not
lower than -- the older, non-green generation.

The next thing you should know is that being green doesn't
make a PC any faster or slower; energy-saving has nothing to do
with performance.

And, the last important question may be, is there a benefit in
choosing a green PC for your next machine? Theoretically, yes,
since a green PC may cut down on your utility bill. In my case,
for instance, my four-year-old EPS, which has a 300-watt power
supply, is usually left on for the whole day even if I know I'm
not going to use it for four hours at a time.

If this EPS were a green PC, I figure it could save me Rp
5,000 (US$2.32) from my monthly electricity bill. That would be
Rp 60,000 ($27.88) per year, and that's not a small amount of
money considering the fact that a plate of gado-gado at the
cafeteria in my office costs Rp 800 ($0.37).

Finally, being green doesn't stop at requiring less power,
saving the fuel for generating electricity and reducing air
pollution, though. Most of the components of Green PCs should be
recyclable, including their motherboards and plastic casing. The
manuals that come with them, as well as the boxes in which
they're shipped, should all be made of recycled paper.

Now, here's an important tip for buying a green PC. Please
make sure the monitor works harmoniously with the CPU. For
instance, Nanao FlexScan, which I don't think is available here
yet, is a very intelligent monitor that turns itself off and on
based on the signals generated by a screen saver program rather
than the CPU.

On the other hand, a CPU may turn off the monitor based on the
setting in its CMOS. So, check for compatibility before you buy,
especially if you're mixing and matching a certain CPU with a
certain monitor.

Nessum Dorma

After reading a little bit about Green PCs, you may also ask,
is there any way to green the non-Energy Star-compliant PC you've
just acquired, so that you can take a short nap and the PC will
also take a rest as you do? Unfortunately, not yet. The best you
can do is install either or both of optional hardware pieces from
Greenware Technologies, 32434-B Golden Lantern # 424, Dana Point,
CA 92629, USA.

Greenware's $89.95 HD Silencer is an 8 bit card that will shut
down your hard disk when the PC has been idle for some time. This
will free your ears from the high-pitch hard disk noise when you
take a nap.

The other product, PC NoiseKiller ($69.95) monitors the
temperature inside your PC and adjusts the speed of the fan
according to cooling needs. As you may have noticed, the noise
from the PC fan can also be annoying, especially if you need to
steal a quick nap between meetings.

HP products

I had always thought that four pages per minute was
sufficient. However, when I once had to print out a 300-page long
research report in a hurry, I began to realize that 4 ppm was not
always sufficient. So, it was great to hear that HP has come up
with two faster laser printers with -- as almost always is the
case with HP products -- the same price tags as the ones being
phased out.

Two models have just been introduced: HP LaserJet 4 Plus and
LaserJet 4M Plus. Both are green as well. Both print at 12 ppm
speed. Both feature 600 by 600 DPI printing resolution. And like
its predecessor, LaserJet 4M Plus works with both Mac and Windows
machines.

Other new features include a faster RISC processor with cache
from Intel, an I/O buffering and HP Bi-Tronics parallel port that
allow users to resume working with their applications faster, and
an array of paper-handling options that you can see in the
accompanying picture.