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.