Sustainable IT | Ted Samson » TAG: Notebooks

February 28, 2008 | Comments: (0)

MacBook Air vs. ThinkPad X300: Which is greener?

TAGS: Apple, EPEAT, Energy Star 4.0, Lenovo, Notebooks

Imagine, if you will, that you're a sustainability-minded individual charged with procuring eco-friendly PCs for your company's workforce. You hop on over to the EPEAT (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool) Web site, where you can find a searchable listing of machines with ratings of Bronze, Silver, and Gold to reflect their varying levels of greenness.

It may be tempting to go straight for the Gold, drawing on the assumption that the category represents the eco-friendliest of the bunch. You might take a moment, however, to probe more deeply as to just what separates a top-tiered machine from a silver-stamped competitor. As I learned this week by comparing the EPEAT standings of Apple and Lenovo's respective, recently released ultra-thin notebooks, a vendor can reap a couple of precious points to boost a product's rating a full color grade by meeting criteria that arguably don't translate into meaningful green benefits for the buyer.

As a bit of background, Apple stirred up some excitement at the MacWorld show with the unveiling of the MacBook Air, a remarkably slender laptop weighing in at a mere three pounds. Just this week, Lenovo answered back with a slightly lighter yet thicker model (one that actually includes a built-in CD/DVD drive, optionally) dubbed the ThinkPad X300.

Beyond the general cool factor of these lean machines (and the back relief they provide weary road warriors), both offer green advantages over rival notebooks. Both boast low-power processors and are Energy Star 4.0 compliant. They not only use fewer materials, thanks to their smaller form factors, but they both exceed the restrictions on dangerous materials set out in the European Union's RoHS (Restriction on the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment) directive. Both are designed for easy disassembling for end-of-life management. Yet the ThinkPad has Gold EPEAT status and the MacBook Air has Silver. Why the difference?

The 85-pound charger
First, it helps to understand how the EPEAT ranking works. In order for any piece of hardware to achieve Bronze status, it must meet a full set of 23 required criteria. On top of those requirements, EPEAT has 28 optional criteria. If a product boasts at least 50 percent of the green options (14 or more), it earns Silver status. Seventy-five percent or higher (21-plus) brings home the gold. (Vendors are responsible for self-reporting their products, by the way. The Green Electronics Council, or GEC, maintains the registry and performs spot-checks on occasion to ensure vendors are being honest.)

As it turns out, Lenovo's ThinkPad earns 21 optional points, earning it a Gold rating; the MacBook Air has 19 optional points, putting it squarely in the Silver camp. At first glance, a two-point difference might suggest that Lenovo simply went the extra green mile to make its offering that much more eco-friendly. But you may think differently if you consider how Lenovo earned them.

First, Lenovo meets the optional EPEAT criterion of making available a "renewable energy accessory": "[The covered product] shall have a commercially available accessory for powering the product that uses renewable energy." That certainly sounds eco-friendly. But for U.S. and Canadian customers, that accessory turns out to be a $1,200 85.5-pound solar generator/panel package, the Solar PowerPac II, offered by a partner company called Advanced Energy Group.

Notably, Lenovo also offers, through AEC, the Solar PowerPac Euro, which is available only in European countries. It's slightly more practical than the Solar PowerBehemoth, weighing in at a mere 14.9 pounds with a price tag of $499. But -- no disrespect to AEC for its product line -- neither of these "renewable energy accessories" strike me as particularly practical for the vast majority of users. Nevertheless, by the EPEAT standard, it makes Lenovo's ThinkPad one point "greener" than the MacBook Air.

Lenovo's not the only company offering the AEC's solar-power chargers as a renewable energy accessory; HP, for example, has received EPEAT Gold status for products by offering the same gear.

Lenovo's second extra point comes from the fact that it, unlike Apple, compiles a corporate report based on the GRI (Global Reporting Initiative). Developed under the auspices of the United Nations, the GRI provides a standardized, global reporting framework "for publicly disclosing an organization’s economic, environmental, and social performance," according to the non-profit organization.

Anyone familiar with Apple's reputation for secrecy shouldn't be surprised to learn that the company doesn't deliver a GRI report. Apple has faced its share of slings and arrows from groups such as Greenpeace for refusing to openly disclose its sustainability practices -- even though Apple has demonstrated support for eco-friendly initiatives. Does Apple's decision not to embrace GRI mean the MacBook Air is less green than the ThinkPad? I'm not convinced.

A work in progress
I called on the vendor-neutral Green Electronics Council to weigh in on the subject. Again, the GEC is charged only with managing the EPEAT registry and verification system, not with developing and updating the criteria. The latter task falls on the shoulders of the subscribing members of EPEAT, which includes environmental advocates, private and public purchasers, manufacturers, recyclers, environmental-purchasing specialists, and researchers.

The GEC's outreach director Sarah O'Brien provided some informative responses. "The two points you mention -- the renewable energy accessory and the GRI reporting -- both fall into the 'stretching the envelope' category," she writes. "When stakeholders developed the standard, they wanted to include points that laid down direction for future efforts-- in order to not just reward immediate/accessible design improvements (which the bulk of the criteria do), but also to reward innovation leading to future progress. So while the immediate environmental benefit of these two products may not be significantly different because of the two criteria you mention, the future direction of the market may well be."

Shedding light on the thinking behind the GRI criterion, O'Brien writes, "Stakeholders (in particular purchasers, who want to be able to fairly compare company environmental performance) felt that this step toward consistency and support for global reporting protocols was important and should be rewarded."

O'Brien notes that the stakeholders behind EPEAT always have the freedom to propose and adopt changes to the criteria -- and acknowledges that there's always room for improvement. "Keep in mind also that the EPEAT standard is still in its shakedown stages -- as subscribers begin to meet some of the criteria that have been more of a stretch, we are all discovering ways that the criteria language should be made more precise or clarified to eliminate loopholes," she says.

In the context of the "available renewable energy accessory," for example, "this may be an instance where language which narrows the criterion down to clarify what 'available' means -- more reasonable pricing or size -- will be merited going forward," she writes.

My two cents on the matter: EPEAT provides an invaluable tool for helping companies and individuals select the eco-friendliest of electronic products. Stakeholders obviously put a lot of thought into developing the criteria, which covers a broad range of environmental considerations: materials used in the product, materials used to package the product, power consumption, and many, many others. As O'Brien notes, though, the standard is still young. It will benefit from ongoing tweaking to ensure that products are properly and fairly rated in a manner to reflect meaningful green benefits that they bring to buyers.

In the meantime, if you're shopping for a green machine, or a fleet of them for your workforce, take a moment to study differences among products. A shinier metallic distinction or a higher price tag doesn't necessarily mean it's a significantly greener product.

Related articles:
Review: MacBook Air is light as, well, air
Lenovo unveils ultra-thin ThinkPad X300 laptop
Green HP rp5700 desktop strikes EPEAT gold

Ted Samson is a senior analyst at InfoWorld and author of the Sustainable IT blog. Subscribe to his free weekly Green Tech newsletter.

Posted by Ted Samson on February 28, 2008 03:00 AM

January 17, 2008 | Comments: (0)

From Macworld to CeBIT, trade shows get greener

TAGS: Apple, Climate Savers, Green technology, Notebooks

The wasteful excesses of the trade shows from the dot-com days are blissfully behind us, good news both for the planet and company coffers. (Yes, I have actually worn those ridiculous logo-emblazoned T-shirts handed out at every table back in the day -- but only for sleeping or painting.)

These days, organizers and participants are taking a kinder, greener approach to shows. Not everything is clean, pristine, and carbon-free -- but from CES to Macworld to the forthcoming CeBIT show, sustainability is on display.

Greener Apple
I wrote previously about some of the greenness seen at CES this month. Meanwhile, Dan Frake and Dan Moren have discovered flickers of green on the Macworld floor. "Of course, Steve Jobs noted the environmentally-friendly construction of the new MacBook Air," they note, which makes the laptop that much cooler. (If you haven't seen InfoWorld Chief Technology Office and Apple Enthusiast Tom Yager's take on the MacBook Air announcement, check it out.)

As for the machine's eco-friendliness, Macworld reports that the machine "has a fully recyclable aluminum case, and is 'the first' to have a mercury-free display with arsenic-free glass. All the circuit boards are BFR-free and PVC-free, and the retail packaging uses 56 percent less material than the MacBook packaging." (I'd like to know how much power it consumes compared to rivals.)

Sascha Segan over at PCMag.com offers a particularly interesting take on what he deems Apple's subtlely "radical new environmental vision." The short of it: He says Apple is focusing on new apps and software upgrades, which in effect extends the life of hardware:

"By focusing on the excitement of software upgrades, Steve Jobs is pointing us towards a world that's better for consumers and that's better for the Earth. Software is generally less expensive than hardware ... and it generates no landfills, no heavy-metal poisoning, and no toxic clouds."

Bit o' green at CeBIT
Meanwhile, this year's CeBIT show, to be held March 4 through 9 in Hannover, Germany, will enjoy an injection of green. The Climate Savers Computing Initiative will be contributing content and participating in a variety of Green IT-related activities at the show. (Climate Savers is a consortium of manufacturers, businesses, organizations, and individuals working to significantly increase the energy efficiency of computers and servers.)

The show will feature a Green IT Village in which Climate Savers and individual exhibitors will present their solutions for more energy-efficient computing. A Green IT Guide will provide answers to green-tech questions. Green IT will also feature prominently in the congress program that accompanies CeBIT 2008, according to the announcement.

Related links:
CES grows greener
Apple shocks boneheaded bloggers
Tech companies unite to tackle desktop energy waste

Ted Samson is a senior analyst at InfoWorld and author of the Sustainable IT blog. Subscribe to his free weekly Green Tech newsletter.

Posted by Ted Samson on January 17, 2008 12:15 PM

January 10, 2008 | Comments: (0)

CES: HP pledges to cut PC power usage by 25 percent

TAGS: Green technology, HP, Hardware, Notebooks, PCs, Power consumption, Power supplies, Processors

Using the greener-than-ever CES as a backdrop, HP this week announced plans to reduce the energy consumption of its volume desktop and notebook PC families by 25 percent by 2010 -- relative to its 2005 numbers.

HP's strategy for achieving this goal is pretty straightforward. In part, the company will continue to integrate more efficient power supplies and lower-energy chip sets into its systems. Here, HP is safely betting on the fact that these component vendors down the supply chain will continue to crank out increasingly efficient wares.

Power to the PC
HP's approach to power supplies is worth noting; I find it quite interesting, given the green agenda the company has embraced. In 2007, HP rolled out smaller form factors for its USDTs (ultra slim desktops). The HP dc7800 Ultra-slim Desktop PC, for example, is 46 percent smaller than previous models.

As part of the new design, the company incorporated a standard 85 percent efficient external power supply, according to Andrew Medlin, senior manager of business PC product marketing at HP. (External power supplies tend to be more efficient than internal, Medin points out.)

That's fine for small systems. Large-chassis systems, however, run on internal power supplies. HP customers seeking to purchase a larger system with a relatively more efficient 80-plus percent internal power supply will need to pay a $20 premium.

In other words, HP isn't making the more efficient supply the standard here. "There is significant cost associated with more efficient power supplies in general, and since not all customers value the more efficient power supplies, we chose to provide them a choice," says Medin.

Of course, I'd love to see HP and other PC vendors pushing green agendas to make efficient power supplies the standard on all of their machines. Yes, I can appreciate that the cold, hard reality of the bottom line can offset the greenest of intentions, a fact that many a vendor is dealing with. Even pushing the efficient power supply at a discount (say, $10 a piece) and highlighting the green and cost-saving benefits would be a good start.

Resting easy
In addition to using efficient components to achieve its goal, HP says it will employ more energy-saving technologies and processes into its volume PC portfolio. As an example, the company pointed out that Verdiem's Surveyor remote power management software agent comes preloaded on all its dc7800-series PCs. "When activated, Surveyor can help measure, manage, and reduce power consumption on PCs and monitors by up to 33 percent, or about 200 kilowatt-hours per PC annually," according to HP.

Indeed, there are cost savings and other green-related benefits to be enjoyed through PC power-management tools. But, as with an 80-plus percent efficient power supply that comes at a premium, the Surveyor tool isn't free; it's costs around $20 per licensee to activate.

Here, I'm less critical of HP's choice. Verdiem's offering is geared toward managing power consumption of PCs throughout a larger organization and is far more powerful than the run-of-the-mill tools that put the average home PC in sleep mode when it's not in use. Tools from Verdiem and its competitors are designed for remotely managing a fleet of PCs, ensuring they're powered down when not in use and turned on just before end-users come to their desks in the morning. Many of these power-management solutions are also designed to wake up systems from sleep mode after hours for patches and backups, then put them back to sleep. Given the power and complexity of these types of tools, it's only fair that HP pass the cost to large-size customers.

HP's Medin does add that HP is working on a power-management tool aimed at small businesses and SOHO customers that "will eventually be available at no added cost."

The bottom line here, as I see it, is that HP's on the right track in pursuing its green agenda. In fact, given all the increasingly efficient components and energy management software we're seeing, I don't expect it will be too difficult for the company to attain its goal of cutting energy usage of its volume desktop and notebook PC families by 25 percent by 2010.

I am, however, interested to see how HP and its competitors will continue to raise the green bar. Will we, in fact, see a company commit to making the most energy-efficient power supplies out there the standard in their systems? Will more PCs come preloaded with better power-management tools? I certainly expect so.

How do you envision PC vendors making their wares greener?

Related links:
CES groomed for green
ColdWatt powers energy-efficient servers
When PCs don't snooze, you lose

Ted Samson is a senior analyst at InfoWorld and author of the Sustainable IT blog. Subscribe to his free weekly Green Tech newsletter.

Posted by Ted Samson on January 10, 2008 12:58 PM

September 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Hardware vendors can learn from eco-friendly OLPC laptop

TAGS: Notebooks

I've been following the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project for a while now, not only because I think it's a good cause, but also because I'm fascinated by the technology of the system, called the XO. I was reminded of the project today when reading that the systems will be made available, for a limited time, to U.S. and Canadian students.

As you may know, the goal of the OLPC project is to equip children in the developing world with rugged, low-cost laptop computers. Not only are they relatively inexpensive -- around $190 a pop -- but they're quite green, partially out of necessity.

For starters, they're highly power efficient, which they have to be, given that they're targeted at users who don't necessarily have ready access to an ample supply of energy. The system uses fewer than two watts, less than one tenth of what a regular laptop consumes. Adding to its power savings: The system selectively suspends operation of its CPU.

The systems also have two display modes, both of which are low-energy. There's a transmissive, full-color mode that consumes about one watt -- one seventh that of the average LCD monitor's power consumption. The reflective, high-resolution mode, which makes it readable in direct sunlight, consumes just 0.2 watts.

Also nifty: These systems can be charged manually with a crank, a pedal, or a pull-cord. That, again, is a must for users who don't have access to an electrical outlet.

In addition to not requiring a lot of juice, the systems are RoHS-compliant; they contain no hazardous materials. The XO's NiMH batteries contain no toxic heavy metals, either, and they boast enhanced battery management for an extended recharge-cycle lifetime.

Finally, the systems are highly durable, designed to last five years. That's a pretty good lifespan, another trait of a green piece of hardware.

So all in all, I'm impressed and encouraged by this system. It demonstrates that organizations can -- if they put their mind to it -- build inexpensive, eco-friendly systems if they're willing to devote time and resources to them. Whereas I'm pleased the OLPC will make the systems available to students in America and Canada, I'm ambivalent for a couple of reasons. First, it's for a limited time. Second, they'll cost $400; part of the money will go to buying a second system for a needy student abroad.

The thing is, there are undoubtedly needy students in the U.S. and Canada who would benefit from having a computer like the XO but can't readily afford a $400 price tag. Hopefully OLPC will give kids worldwide a chance to buy one of these systems -- or perhaps other vendors out there will be inspired to do something similar.

Posted by Ted Samson on September 24, 2007 08:06 AM

June 12, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Dell Latitude D630 notebook scores gold status for green

TAGS: Dell, Energy Star 4.0, Notebooks

Latitude D630 the first and currently only notebook on market to meet the highest EPEAT rating

Dell has added a bit more gold to its green credentials, having released the first notebook on the market to achieve Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) gold status: the Latitude D630.

Dell announced the Latitude D630's gold distinction late last week, not long after HP announced the first EPEAT gold-status desktop on the market, the rp5700. Dell has a couple of EPEAT gold desktops itself: the OptiPlex 740 and 745 Energy Smart mini-tower systems.

EPEAT is a procurement system that helps purchasers evaluate, compare and select products based on environmental attributes. Products meeting all required criteria and at least 75 percent of the optional criteria are recognized as EPEAT Gold.

Among the Latitude D630's eco-friendly attributes that helped it earn EPEAT gold, the system meets Energy Star 4.0 requirements, plus it has a lifecycle of about three to four years, according to Dell spokesman Jeremy Bolen.

The D630 packs an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, an upgrade from the D620, and offer integrated graphics for longer battery life, according to Dell. The hard drive is of the SATA variety, up to 160GB in capacity.

The system is also ruggedized (Dell calls it RoadReady) for longer life with full magnesium-alloy construction.

Power options include a 65-watt or 90-watt AC adapter with cord wrapping. Additionally, Dell uses 25 percent post-consumer recycled content in cardboard packaging.

For more information, go here.

Posted by Ted Samson on June 12, 2007 02:41 PM