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

[Tom Worthington]

At 09:54 AM 16/10/2007, 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  ...

Most PCs would be required to comply with the standard and so it may 
not be worth the custom assemblers to bring in cheap parts to make 
noncomplying systems. Also it should be noted that the standard is 
for desktop computers, not for servers or data centers (standards for 
those are still being worked on).

Large customers, such as government agencies and large companies, 
would likely require standards compliance for any PCs they buy. 
Retail computers would be required to comply. In theory a small 
client might want a few custom designed computers and not care about 
being energy efficient. But this would be such a small segment of the 
market that it might not be worth the assembler importing cheap parts 
for it. If the assembler makes a custom PC out of the same parts as a 
complying system, then their custom system should have reasonable 
energy efficiency, even if it does not have an official sticker on it.

>encumbered with unrequired OS. ...

As I understand it, current versions of Linux include the needed 
interface to energy efficiency settings for computer hardware, such 
as for slowing the processor and turning off the screen. So 
specifying Linux should not prevent energy savings. The catch might 
be if the maker has to have their system separately qualified with 
Linux. But if I was buying PCs for an organisation and the PC had an 
energy star rating when running Microsoft Windows, I would happy to 
specify buying it to run with a mainstream Linux distribution, on the 
assumption that the same energy saving would be achieved.

In reality what is more likely to be a problem are support staff, 
using Windows or Linux, who turn off the energy saving features in 
the systems for their own convenience. It is a lot easier to do a 
software upgrade if you leave all the systems running all the time. 
There also still seem to be a lot of IT people who think a "screen 
saver" which scrolls text is a good idea, when it is actually 
stopping the screen from switching to low power mode.

When I did a search of the US Energy Star rated laptops, the only one 
listed with Linux was the OLPC: 
<http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=find_a_product.showProductDetail&pd_id=1092362&pgw_code=CO&pd_code=NOT&resultsPerPage=100&sortParameter=brand%5Fname&startnum=1&letter=ALL&pat_P1203=11003>.


ps: Kevin Miller, Architect, will talk on "Computers and green 
architecture" at the ANU in Canberra, 6pm, Wednesday 17 October 2007 
<http://education.acs.org.au/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=494>.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                      http://www.tomw.net.au/
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, ANU