Microsoft One Step From World's Greenest Company

An anonymous reader writes "According to this article, Microsoft is only a few lines of code away from becoming the greenest company on Earth." From the article: "Redmond should issue a software upgrade to every computer running Microsoft Windows worldwide to adjust each machine's energy-saving settings for maximum efficiency." The author figures that the upgrade would affect 100 million computers and that the power cost savings could hit $7 billion per year. CO2 emissions would be cut by 45 million tons. But what about the impact on computing?

Spare us the uninformed babble, please

[Zigg]

What a phenomenally stupid idea. I have personally used a half-dozen machines where enabling "power-saving" is a recipe for operational disaster. Machines that power off completely. Machines that lock up. Machines that do something and never come back.

I think the lack of foresight on TFA's part with this inane suggestion reflects pretty accurately on how seriously we should take the article as a whole.

It Wouldn't Affect Computing At All

[Anonymous Coward]

People who need better performance would change the settings. The vast majority of people don't need better performance. The vast majority would be okay (performance-wise) running a slightly souped-up C128 with GEOS and the Wave.

Even more power savings

[Enderandrew]

I've seen server rooms that run off DC and have substantial power savings.

Google suggested a new standard for ATX power supplies that is supposed to have again, substantial power savings.

There are solutions out there without a doubt. Big businesses would save money on their bills.

So why is no one interested in saving money?

Bueller? Bueller?

Re:Unsolicited Advice

[heroofhyr]

I don't grasp how this is "anti-Microsoft." That's a wee bit hyperdefensive to accuse the OP of. All the blog says is that if more people put their computer in standby or sleep mode at the end of the workday, the world would save a lot of money and electricity. That's not anti- anything except senseless waste. It's true however you want to defend it. I've never worked in a corporation that shut the computers off at the end of the day, despite the fact that it'd probably save them tens of thousands on electricity and having to buy new hardware periodically. As for how complex it is, considering there's already an option in every Windows system to put the computer in Standby after X Minutes, I doubt it would be very hard to change the setting in the Registry or wherever it's stored (I don't do Windows programming, but I use it enough to know the dialog box for Sleep Mode is there). That seems impractical and risky to me. It'd be better for MS just to start some sort of "corporate conservation" campaign telling them to shut the workstations down in the evening and flashing a bunch of slick graphs with captions like "Profit Losses Due to Idle Computers" on them till the executives' eyes glaze over and they submit.

Even better

[k-sound]

Microsoft could also use their online updating powers to make windows secure, thus reducing the power consumption caused by viruses, spyware, virus scanners etc.that use 90% the resources on the average windows box.

How exactly?

[chrismcdirty]

How would this make Microsoft the greenest company? As far as I can tell, it wouldn't. It would make the companies that use MS products greener companies. It would have nothing to do with the net energy that Microsoft uses.

The Numbers are the Amazing Part

[Anonymous Coward]

This article did directly address Microsoft concerning power consumption, and perhaps rightly so, I won't speculate. But the amazing thing here are, in fact, the numbers. If we actually just allowed our machines to enter sleep mode, we could have a significant environmental impact. A positive environment inpact, to be clearer. And if that isn't enough, for large businesses the cost savings should be relevent as well.

This isn't just about what Microsoft can and cannot do, this is about what we as users do. For those of us in the know, we should take this to heart and make an effort, if we aren't already, to reduce our power consumption. For everyone else, there needs to be education. Microsoft built in the feature, now we as techies need to let everyone know how to use that feature. Something like this helps everyone.

Re:Spare us the uninformed babble, please

[MarkH]

While the idea needs some more work if it saves this volume of energy it is worth serious investigation. I am afraid the only 'phenomenally stupid idea' is having 100 million appliances which need to be working at full pelt for no other reasons than the way the software on them is designed.

Imagine the laughs if a new car was brought out which required the engine to be on all the time - because if you turned it off you cannot unlock the doors.

Re:Greenest?

[tgd]

While dropping the monopoly word in here is a sure fire way to get modded up, it just amazes me that a community of people who run two, three, or more different OS's, on different hardware platforms cry monopoly at every chance with Microsoft but do not when they are complaining about being stuck with a 3mbit cable modem, or unable to get bare copper lines for DSL back in the day, or even able to get FIOS TV because their town granted a monopoly to the local cable company.

There are REAL monopolies impacting people in the US vastly more than the anti-Microsoft brigade seems to understand.

Its a very myopic view of things.

Not that easy

[khendron]

Can you imagine the support nightmare Microsoft would unleash upon themselves if they did what the article suggests?

Articles like this underline a huge problem in the software industry. Too many people think that software is easy, and that all any problem needs is a few software tweaks. Too many people are willing to offer up solutions without thinking the issue all the way through.

It is attitudes like this that lead to failed billion-dollar IT projects, most of what is offered on the Daily WTF [thedailywtf.com], and VB hacks promoting themselves as software engineers.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Spare us the uninformed babble, please

[Mayhem178]

Imagine the laughs if a new car was brought out which required the engine to be on all the time - because if you turned it off you cannot unlock the doors.

You just described every server on the market.

I know that I would not want Microsoft fumbling around with the power saving settings on my Windows 2000/2003 Server (if I had one) computer just because they think they know what's best for consumers. I mean, we've already seen this mentality from them on numerous occasions, and how many times has it resulted in something useful? WGA protecting the consumer? Bull. How about how any Microsoft product update automatically resets the application in question to be the default application of that type (e.g. anything in Microsoft Office)?

Now they want to muck with power savings settings through an update. Sorry, I'm gonna pass on that one.

Re:Even more power savings

[Anonymous Coward]

Because most businesses have a hard time seeing past the initial cost differential of buying a DC server vs. an AC server, nevermind the cost of making your server room DC rather than AC.

Not sure about the ATX power supply, but I have to say that most of the equipment in most server rooms (remember that Google uses biege boxes, rather than vendor specific servers) don't use a standard ATX powersupply anyway - the form factor is way different, even if the output voltages are the same. That would cost a fortune to change out for most companies too. And in this day and age of "where's the profit?" you will be very unlikely to convince anyone to spend money now to save it in a couple of years.

Home PC/Mac Power Consumption

[lancejjj]

I figured out that my PCs were consuming more electricity than my fridge, dish washer, and clothes washer. Combined.

I made a chart of actual electricity use of various PCs and Macs on my blog: PC and Mac power consumption [blogspot.com].

In a nutshell, my annual power consumption went down by 30% (!) once I started to power down my home-built "home server PC" when not in use.

I also figured out that when buying a new PC that is going to see a lot of use, power consumption should be a factor. If you're saving $100 in purchase price, but spending $50/year for additional electricity because the cheap PC's power supply is grossly inefficient, well, have you really saved anything if you keep that machine for 3 years? The short answer. NO.

Even better idea

[PFritz21]

Powering down unused PC's would be an even better idea. My desktop at work is only on for the 9 hours I'm in the office, and my home machine is only on for the 6 hours in the evening after work and before I go to bed.

don't see a problem

[dlc3007]

I'm sorry, but I don't see a problem here. This seems no worse than turning on the Windows firewall by default. Those of us who spend a lot of time tweeking and modifying our machines would obviously configure our systems to behave the way we want them to. People who don't care won't care anyway.

I have no issues at all with my sister's computer going into a power-safe mode by default. My grandmother's computer could certainly scale back when she's not playing solitare... could probably scale back while she's playing solitare.

Please don't get your panties in a wad just because we're talking about Microsoft here.

Re:Here's my (better) idea.

[I_HATE_THIS]

The worst thing about screen saver is that it doesn't save the screen either, because every components in the monitor have life span. As long as it is running, it is running towards certain death. The screen saver only make the monitor die faster.

Short hardware life is bad for the enviroment

[SgtChaireBourne]

Hardware is toxic and energy intensive to produce and to dispose of. MS pushes a short hardware upgrade cycle, aiming to get its customers to make new hardware purchases every two years or so. Remember not only do later versions require newer hardware, eventually out-growing old hardware, most of MS' income is from Windows sales and nearly all of that is from OEM sales. Thus, MS is economically dependent on a short life span of units with unreasonably large ecological footprints.

Say the ecological footprint of hardware is the same over time.

• A 3 yr cycle, instead of a 2yr, is about a 30% reduction in ecological impact
• A 4 yr cycle, instead of a 2yr, is about a 50% reduction
• A 5 yr cycle, instead of a 2yr, is about a 60% reduction
• A 6 yr cycle, instead of a 2yr, is about a 70% reduction

You get the idea. Or ...

• A 4 yr cycle, instead of a 3yr, is about a 25% reduction in ecological impact
• A 5 yr cycle, instead of a 3yr, is about a 40% reduction
• A 6 yr cycle, instead of a 3yr, is about a 50% reduction

A 3, 4 or 5 year hardware cycle is perfectly reasonable, unless the software/operating systems gets so slow and bloated that performance suffers. Or unless the vendor stops supporting the software or operating system and their is no way to get third party or home grown support. So, MS-enforced hardware upgrades are definitely not green.

Anyway, the blog (it's not a real article) is way off base about energy consumption. Shame on /. for pushing MS' hype.

MS' coding practices make the company un-ecological: As the blog points out, currently, most MS machines get left on 24/7 (or as close to that as possible) to allow crackers to get in -- I mean to allow the system administrators to push out patches on "patch tuesday" or whatever it's called now.

Turning the machines off would also make them invulnerable to exploits, at least for the duration of the inactive period. Wake-on-LAN is an underutilized feature and could allow that. But it has nothing to do with any specific operating system.

Re:Even better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

"Insightful"?

I had a poached egg for breakfast, I hit starbucks on the way into the office, and now I'm heading for my 'consitutional'. How's that, can I get modded up?

Re:Here's my (better) idea.

[DrXym]

I have colleagues who have screensavers running on there PCs/laptops for _days_ (as on weekends) and monitors never go to sleep. Sigh.

Which raises an interesting point. I expect if someone were to study how many computers were doing anything useful during out of office hours, the figure would be 10% tops. It seems like it would be an easy way to compel companies to use energy saving settings by hiking the electricity rates out of office hours so that leaving machines on that were doing nothing cost them real money.

Re:Greenest?

[Cadallin]

Right. I really don't see ANY change in their behavior. The recent release of the Zune exemplefies this. Once again, Microsoft has entered into partnerships and built up a platform (Playsforsure) and then turned around and released their own, proprietary and incompatible platform (Zune, and its Zune music store), stabbing their partners in the back, as they have done, many, many times in the past. If you need examples, just look at IBM, who they have done that to at least twice off the top of my head. Once in the DOS contract negotiations, and again on OS/2. Other Companies, such as Lotus Software (Lotus 1-2-3) Corel (Wordperfect), and Sega (The Dreamcast) suffered the same fate.

To be perfectly honest, I don't really understand why any company would enter into a partnership with Microsoft at all. Much like Wal-Mart, they will fuck you over the first chance they get, because they want the income and marketshare that you have. Of course I know the answer, it's"Money", but that really doesn't change that doing business with Microsoft is ultimately very, very dangerous for your companies long term bottom line.

I do not see Microsoft's recent actions as "embracing open source," maybe in their tried and true "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" strategy, by attempting to fragment the market, and sow Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about non-Novell blessed (and hence Microsoft blessed) Open-source software. Bill Gates is no different than Andrew Carnegie (well actually, he is. Gates' parents were Upper-middle/Upper class Corporate attorneys, while Carnegie really did start out without a pot to piss in) he's stolen his Billions, and now he's trying to "Buy his way into heaven" as it were, trying to change history's view of him with good deeds that cost him nothing. Gates can donate $100 million dollars checks to a half dozen charities and not notice a damn thing.

Re:Here's my (better) idea.

[WilliamTS99]

A policy that is not enforced holds no merit. And it has nothing to do with a 'screensaver' it has to do with locking the computer. :-)

Re:Spare us the uninformed babble, please

[CastrTroy]

Is that really what they refer to as being a green company? If they were really green, they'd get rid of all those plastic discs, and distribute all the software over the internet, or at least get rid of the oversized boxes for their software. I know companies that are much more green. Take the Beer Store [thebeerstore.ca] for example. They recycle somewhere near 95% of their products sold. I wish they'd bring back returnable glass bottles for milk and Pop. It would do the environment a lot more good than the current system. I think that food should be pushed into reusable packaging for everything. It would make a lot more sense, and put a lot less stress on our landfills.

Re:Good lord!

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course you are right! With Vista requiring a Dual core 2.8ghz processor. damed linux runs on hardware that draws only 10-30 watts instead of a efficient 400-600 watts.

Damn those linux people! using less power! DAMN THEM! DAMN THEM!!!

(truth: mini ITX 1.2ghz uses about 30 watts and does everything you need fast under linux. Vista needs a machine that drinks 400-600 watts and does nothing more for the average consumer or workplace.)

Sarcasm

[Yvanhoe]

[sarcasm]This of course compensate for the wastes generated by all people upgrading their computer when a new version of windows is out. Surely upgrading to Vista and changing computer is easier than changing a windows setting.[/sarcasm]

Please note that while sarcastic, I am happy that the mass market blindly following the trend help fund the R&D effort to produce the better computer I need to run my computer-vision programs...

[Linux zealotery] You can surf the web, play divx, mp3, program and write emails using Linux on an "old" (maybe 3 years) configuration. They are less powerful but generaly use less power. Needing a PIV 3 GHz Dual Core with 2 Go RAM and a graphic card with more memory than I have in my file server for reading emails and DVDs is the real waste, Microsoft is only somehow compensating for this.[/Linux zealotery]

[mod me insightful] Linux is not produce by a company but by individuals on their free time, we can't give its "green rank". But if we want to compare this network of people to a company like Microsoft you have to consier some things :

People in large companies tend to use more resources than people on their free time, be it paper, power, AC, better computers, etc...

The "Linux network" only has programmers. No marketing department, no administration, no financial department, etc... each one of these producing their own wastes

Linux is often used to "recycle" old PCs into education tools or simple media boxes. Do do that with, say, Win 95, you would have (in theory) to 1) find a licence 2) forget about internet connectivity because of all the nasty stuff Win 95 is vulnerable about 3) forget about recent software, even those which are lightweight.[/mod me insightful]

Re:Spare us the uninformed babble, please

[gad_zuki!]

You can shutoff a computer just like you can shut-off a car. There's a power switch right on the front! And unlike televisions and DVD players and other more popular toys it shuts down completely.

When modern OS's have nothing to do they sent halt commands to the processor cutting down power consumption greatly. Default settings shut down the monitor in a few minutes when unused. CRTs use a significant amount of power.

A PC on idle is like a lightbulb left on. Where's the animosity towards the guy who leaves his porch light on all night or the city lighting streets when no one is around? Heck, do you really need a big screen tv or more than one computer? As you can see, energy saving is a touchy issue. The best strategy has always been education first and hard arm tactics last (like this proposal). The application of sane power settings is alraedy here. If you want to make a difference you should lobby to make incandescent bulbs illegal, leavign lights on illegal, using hotplates and space heaters illegal, hairdryers, etc. Those use many times the power a PC uses and can all be done without.

spyware is just another symptom

[SgtChaireBourne]

Hmm. It seems that the thriving ecosystem of spyware, viruses, worms and trojans is also the direct result of MS' coding practices. Or perhaps to be more precise because of fundamental design flaws in the product. Either way, the problem is not the user, but the vendor.

But that does bring up a very important second point. The "re-format and re-install" mantra has the effect of reducing competition because of the difficulty in auto-installing third-party software on MS-Windows. Unlike Red Hat's kick start or Debian's APT, the third party apps have to wait until they can be installed manually. In that case, especially for large scale sites, the IT dept decides it's too much work to go for best of breed and knuckle under to convenience. Even if they do go with third party apps, time limitations (lunch, meetings, end of shift, project deadlines, etc.) may intervene and prevent completion of installation of the third party apps. With 10's or 100's of millions of PC's, just shifting the frequency a small amount means large numbers of units.

Using a system which is not prone to spyware, viruses, worms or trojans and does well with low system requirements is also an option for many. Power users and hard core gamers may have trouble. Some, a surprisingly small number, of business apps may cause trouble. But low-tech users who just surf or e-mail or play music will do just fine and may not notice.

So there are three choices there:

1. toss the spyware machine and buy a new one - an ecologically bad choice
2. re-format, re-install and genuflect to Chairman Gates' photo - a choice that damages the free market
3. upgrade to Linux, BSD, or something that extends the effective life of the hardware - a change which some users may not notice, but which may traumatize gamers and powerusers

Screen savers - sleep

[antdude]

I wished screen savers would pause/stop when DPMS come on. I noticed this in Windows and Linux so far. I also avoid 3D screen savers due to 3D card usage.

Re:Good lord!

[_anomaly_]

I'll never understand why people such as yourself feel it necessary to tell such blatent lies (that are so easily disproved)

...and I'll never understand how people think that telling another (albeit opposing) specific, personal experience "disproves" another's specific, personal experience. Saying your machine with setup X does Y does not disprove anything. It's the same post as the parent, just with opposite results. I don't see how your post, which comes off as nothing but flamebait, could be modded up either.

Re:Greenest?

[killjoe]

I have one question.

When the EU recently gave them 7 days to comply with their order why did Bill and Melinda go meet with the head of the EU to talk about their charitable dealings? When india was talking about using open source why did Bill and Melinda show up in india with a large check for aids prevention?

Was all that just a coinky dink?