[LINK] Australian energy efficiency standards for personal computers and monitors

[Glen Turner]

On Tue, 2007-10-16 at 09:54 +1000, Howard Lowndes wrote:
> What  will be the impact on white box computer assemblers who design 
> computers to suit clients specific needs and don't want to compromise 
> with off the shelf OEM products that don't meet the exact specs and are 
> encumbered with unrequired OS.

Hi Howard,

The "off the shelf" components can build systems to meet the US Energy
Star requirements. As you might expect since the white box and of the
brand name manufacturers use the same components.

As for operating systems, it's a bit more complex. Linux's performance
is notoriously poor -- partly because many its device drivers are
reverse-engineered (and power-down modes are difficult to reverse
engineer so many times this additional step has not been done) and
partly because its energy-saving subsystems have been mis-designed.
Since operating system's behaviour now contributes to the Energy Star
rating of desktops, there's a lot of emphasis on fixing Linux prior
to the latest Energy Star ratings becoming mandatory for US Government
purchases.

The Energy Star program is deficient in that it does not guide consumers
to purchase the most efficient computer for their needs.  For example,
a 50W Via EPIA used for web/e-mail will get the same rating as a 2000W
Pentium quad core used for web/e-mail.  It's also sub-optimal for
laptops -- they have screens in the same chassis as the CPU, so there
are steps the CPU can take to constrain screen power consumption. But
these steps don't help the Energy Star rating so there is no motivation
for laptop manufacturers and OS designers to cooperate in this area.

What is nice to see is the emphasis on embedded computers.  All of those
"low power" devices add up quickly. eg - there's still a lot of floro
displays used where a LCD display would use less power; most embedded
CPUs don't run in sleep mode when idle, etc.

Cheers, Glen

-- 
 Glen Turner