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?

Good lord!

[Anonymous Coward]

Install Linux! Pollute the Earth!!!!!1111

Re:

[h2g2bob]

That's not really trolling - Linux doesn't seem set up to save power. While there are packages like hibernate [debian.org], it's not well advertised, and didn't get installed by default for me.

Re:Good lord!

[molarmass192]

I don't know if YOU'RE trolling, but wtf does "Linux doesn't seem set up to save power" mean? Novell's SuSE Linux comes will CPU frequency scaling and suspend to RAM enabled. My laptop battery consistently lasts LONGER on flights than my co-workers who use Windows. Besides all that, Linux is just the kernel, it has facilities for throttling CPU and disks sleeping, it's up to the packager to use them.

Hey Linux power management is great

[Colin Smith]

I've just turned powersave features to ma

Re:

[Psykosys]

You would be totally right, if Vista actually required a dual core 2.8ghz processor or anything close. Judging by the system requirements [microsoft.com], that mini-ITX would do quite nicely.

Re:Good lord!

[xrobertcmx]

I don't know where those system requirements came from, maybe magic fairy land. When I installed Vista on my Athlon 64 3400+ w/an X700Pro and 1gig of Ram it was slow. When I thought maybe RC1 would be faster, I installed it on my Macbook, still slow, on the same desktop with 2 gig of ram and an 7600GT still slow. When I upgraded the processor to an Athlon X2 4400 and the 2gig of Ram now ran dual channel and it was installed to Sata Drive, not as slow, but still not as fast as XP. Oh, and we tried it on an old 3ghz PIV Mobile and it would barely move. That machine had a Directx 9 graphics card too.

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[_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 u

Re:Good lord!

[TheDruidBear]

I dual boot my HP laptop and I get 2.5 hrs battery life from my Mandriva Linux side where I get just over 1.5 hours on my Windows side (and the MS side is set to conserve battery life). Needless to say, I tend to stay on the Linux side. Peace Bear

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.

Re:

[nametaken]

Yeah, hmm... $7 billion per year in power savings. Is that counting the $10 billion in additional customer support costs, lost productivity, aggravation and egg on Microsoft's face?

Re:

[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: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:

[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 leav

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:

[Carewolf]

Or even better don't buy sub-standard software. Hardware very rarely faults, most problem is are due to software.

So so dumb the MS crap and install Linux.

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.

Re:

[Bogtha]

People who need better performance would change the settings.

If they were clueful enough to a) understand that their settings have been changed, and b) figure out how to change them back.

I suspect a decent amount of people would complain about how slow their computer has got lately, and end up going out and buying a brand new computer, just like they do when they get clogged up with spyware etc. It's certainly possible that manufacturing a whole new computer and chucking the old one away is worse

Already?

[n3tcat]

What about all the companies that enforce power management settings across their network that remove standby mode etc? And that's just one large example of all of the little situations which would partially negate this ignorantly large savings estimation.

Not saying it wouldn't help, but you don't force something like this down on a 5 year old OS. Now if they included some sort of detection system in Vista that adjusted accordingly, then that would be helpful for the next gen.

Actually

[Toreo asesino]

I've set our network up to do rather a lot overnight; the "healing process" as I like to call it. Each workstation is completely backed up to a storage server, SourceSafe to the tap-drive(40Gb database), SQL Servers run the maintenance plans (backups to tape, index consolidations, etc), automatic updates are installed and applied (if there are any), and each machine runs a full virus scan. It takes most of the night, and is quite essential for smooth running.

Basically, by the time people arrive in the morni

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[jimicus]

Don't know if it's still the case, but historically Wake-on-LAN has been fantastically unreliable.

Re:

[blindcoder]

Well, on my 3year old mainboard, it certainly is.
Shut Windows down using a short touch on the power button (you'll see the shutdown window), and Wake-On-LAN does exactly nothing.
Shut Windows down with Start->Shutdown (still funny today) and WOL works.
Shut Linux down with 'halt', 'init 0' or 'shutdown -h now' and WOL works.

None of this has ANYTHING to do with saving power

[brunes69]

Changing just two settings on the average office PC will cut it's useage by over 50% on a daily average, yet hardly any office ever mandates that they be enabled

- Screen saver totally disabled in favor of DPMS suspend after 10 minutes of inactivity and monitor shut off after 15 minutes

- Set hard drives to spin down after 20 minutes of inactivity.

See how easy that was? It didn't affect your backup plan or anything else. The hard drive setting ALONE can save you 15% or more, especially if your office runs lot

Re:None of this has ANYTHING to do with saving pow

[compwizrd]

It gets expensive replacing hard drives after a couple years of start/stop cycles.. one of the reasons you'll notice the hard drive setting is set to off by default after Windows 98.

Here's a thought ...

[LaughingCoder]

If the installed base of PCs was comprised of many different OSes each of comparable market penetration, this would require almost every OS vendor to make these changes -- assuming of course they all had something akin to the Windows Power control applet in the first place. In fact, this *could* be one of those times when having a monopoly desktop OS is a *good* thing.

Here's my (better) idea.

[ceeam]

Please disable "screen saver" feature altogether. DPMS sleep modes work much, much better for "screen saving" (and screen saver of course do not save energy at all). Flying shits and "nice" landscapes may be kinda fun for a first time but that time ended about 20 years ago. Oh, same applies to all unices and macs of course. I have colleagues who have screensavers running on there PCs/laptops for _days_ (as on weekends) and monitors never go to sleep. Sigh.

Re:

[jonwil]

On todays systems with todays power saving mointors and video cards, there is NO excuse for not having minotor power saving mode enabled at some level.

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[Cragen]

Your idea has a (perceived) flaw when it comes to reality. Example: All US Army PC's are now required to have screen savers that activate (w/approved password) after 10 min. of inactivity. Not necessarily a great idea, but the Army thinks it is so us folk that work for them have that capability enabled on our PC's whether we wish it or not. Heck, we can't even change the background via screen settings as that tab is disabled. Sigh... Cragen

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[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.

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[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 r

Re:

[_xeno_]

Even worse are screensavers that waste energy. Whenever I'm running under Linux and XScreensaver pops up, the fan on my laptop slowly starts to ramp up to "jet aircraft" levels. I have a feeling if I SSHed in and pulled up top, XScreensaver would be using 100% CPU to pull off 100FPS of lines moving around.

Personally I prefer something like the default Windows 2000/XP screensaver, which is just the Windows logo being displayed at a random location that changes every couple of seconds. Very low CPU power

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.

A bigger energy saver would be code/ a device

[Channard]

.. that let Microsoft globally turn off those flashy LEDs and stupid crap that people use to customize their PC cases with. Clearing stores of the USB attached crap they sell at Christmas would help too - my local store is selling USB powered plastic fake-fish fish tanks, cup warmers and much more.

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: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.

Suuuuure

[Andy Dodd]

Number of non-mobile computers out there that support CPU frequency and clock scaling - Very few.

AMD has only had that on the market for desktop CPUs for 3-4 years (or less), and Intel has only had it on the market for 3-4 months (since the Core 2 Duo launch for the desktop). No previous Intel desktop CPU supported any power management of significance.

This is one of those aspects of hardware that can't be changed in software. If the hardware doesn't support it (and for a few more years, most machines won't, people overestimate how often the "average Joe" replaces his hardware, same for corporate users), no software update will do a thing.

If he's talking about suspend and hibernate - That stuff is disabled by default because it rarely ever works properly. Of all the machines I own, only one (My newest machine) can wake up from hibernation with 100% reliability. If Microsoft tried to force hibernation to be enabled on all users, they would have a massive lawsuit on their hands due to all the machines that can't handle it.

In other news...

[lennart78]

Car companies could drastically reduce emissions is they would would just limit all internal combustion engines at 3000rpm. Think of what this would do for emission levels.
Or that the engine would shut itself down if you let it run stationary for 30 seconds.

I think I just solved the entire global warming issue!
Onwards to the meaning of life!

Re:

[DrSkwid]

I read that 2 minutes was the point at which cutting an engine saves fuel.

Trying to find a link for that is a tad tricky.

Re:

[lennart78]

No! You're doing it wrong. Don't be scientific about it, just say: An engine that's not running is not using any fuel.
Stick to these kind of logics and people will think you talk in simple truths. Next thing you'll be president of the USA.

OK, sorry, I'll take my pills now and get back to work...

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[ThosLives]

That's what people *say* but I'm not entirely sure. I've been doing a bit of engine-start calibration recently, and mostly it depends on the calibration. Let's say to start an engine, you get a primer pulse of 100ms, then 5 revolutions of fuel before hitting idle speed, then you're running normal (on a warm engine, so there's none of that goofy warm-up stuff).

Let's say, for instance, that running at idle you have fuel pulses of 4 ms. Let's say this is a 4 cylinder. So, the primer pulse is 400 ms of fuel

GPO

[skinfitz]

What they should do is allow machine power settings to be controllable from an Active Directory policy object. Network admins would then have fine control of the power usage of their desktops.

Gotta wait a little bit longer...

[pointbeing]

What they should do is allow machine power settings to be controllable from an Active Directory policy object. Network admins would then have fine control of the power usage of their desktops.

Vista allows power management settings to be managed by policy object.

Re:GPO

[VoidEngineer]

Power usage settings are stored in the registry, and therefore can be controlled via the Active Directory by pushing out registry scripts, both at the computer profile and user profile levels. Windows machines *can* be controlled by Active Directory in the manner you are speaking... the trick is learning how to use Active Directory well enough to implement those changes when there isn't necessarily a nice graphical interface and a 'click here' policy object. I think what you mean to say is that they should have a nice Active Directory panel specifically for domain computer power usage policies.

Re:

[skinfitz]

No actually I'm pretty sure I meant that they should provide a GPO for managing power.

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.

Re:

[Nate B.]

Bingo!

Expending resources on useless and harmful activity certainly must account for much of the energy consumption. It would be fantastic if someone could quantify this impact, although that would be "embarrassing" for MS and thus won't be done.

Or just reduce code bloat?

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

If the processor(s) weren't so busy running such piggy code, perhaps they could automagically throttle down without any coaxing from Redmond and without affecting those of us who need to have their systems running full-bore 24/7.

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.

Re:

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

You don't think Microsoft machines run Windows?

Well, I suppose if they've banned SourceSafe...

Vista

[mobby_6kl]

Vista already seems to have a more power-saving profile by default, I was surprised when I couldn't VNC into it a few hours after leaving. Turned out (when I physically got there) it entered the suspend mode. Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway, hah!), the power settings are back at Always On.

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:

[schon]

Why would Microsoft be the greenest? Those computers are not theirs.

Obviously you haven't read the fine print in the EULA! :)

It's simple....

[JaJ_D]

a) Install pskill
b) Kill -9 -1.

Job's done!

Jaj

if MS won't do it

[zome]

someone please write a worm that sets power-setting to maximum. The world will be a better place in no time...:-)

Oh, come on...

[pointbeing]

Apparently unlike some I actually read TFA.

I don't see where Microsoft commented one way or the other. What we have is a blogger with an idea to inflict power saving modes on people. MS is *way* smarter than that.

It's one of the down sides to free speech on the internet - even people who have dumb things to say can be instantly (and globally) published. ;-)

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.

Re:

[Overzeetop]

You guys must live in amazingly temperate zones, or perhaps really hot ones, where every watt of power used in your house has to be pulled back out by a cooling unit. I have an 8 drive tower and a server. Presuming that the drives get exercized regularly, I'm pulling about 75 watts, on average and with inefficiencies, maybe (maybe) 150w at the 120v outlet. So here I am at about $7 a month. Except, of course, that the unit operates in my basement, which I generally have to add heat to in order to make livabl

Very Green

[rlp]

$28.25 billion dollars of cash on the balance sheets. That's a lot of green!

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.

I'll choose

[martin]

I'll choose what settings to run, esp on machines I need to backup at random times during the night.

yes it would be nice to turn the things off/standby/hibernate but it wouldn't work here..

Servers

[Xugumad]

Err, I hate to mention this, but for the poor people stuck using Windows as a server platform, wouldn't this mean their entire server room would quietly go to sleep each night, and then require someone to be in to power up every system and ensure they come back from sleep okay? Which is not what I'd call a trivial task...

Thanks...but no Thanks.

[haplo21112]

I will deceide my systems power settings, the default ones out of the box are often too much more me. I am all for saving energy, but most of my systems I need completely awake and alive all of the time.

Of course, wasn't it Microsoft....

[Dcnjoe60]

Of course wasn't it Microsoft that implemented all of the power down features because it took so long to boot Windows in the first place that people didn't want to wait so long for the computer to power on? Wasn't it also the bloated Windows code and feature creep that made it necessary for ever faster cpu, ram, video and storage requirements, which all equate to more energy consumption? Isn't also true that Microsoft Vista is going to tax these resources even more? So, isn't it a bit hypocritical to talk about how "green" Microsoft would be by forcing computers to power down?

Maybe a better solution would be an OS designed to run on lower powered devices from the start instead of trying to make the high horse powered PC of today more efficient. As an analogy, although there have been improvements with technology, an eight cylinder automobile is not going to ever be as fuel efficient as a four cylinder one. Nor will a four cylinder be as efficient, say as a fuel-cell powered one. Likewise, as long as the system requirements to just run Windows (not even applications on Windows) keeps increasing, the PC will continue to consume greater and greater amounts of power.

We all know, even if we don't want to admit it, that personal productivity for the business masses, anyway, has ceased to improved, at least significantly, from the latest releases of Windows. Why? Because of those 600 million computers quoted in the article, most are used for things like word processing, simple spreadsheets and surfing the web and to do email. Stuff that computers capable of running Windows 2000 and Office 2000 (if not earlier versions) still do quite well. Sure new versions make it easier to get pictures of our cameras and to create music, etc. But the vast majority of people aren't seriously doing that work and those that are, use specialized tools, anyway.

Now, many will argue, and I would agree, that hardware is cheap, relatively, anyway. However, the point of the article was not about cheap hardware, but about saving energy. And the point of the matter is that as long as we keep adding fluff and flash to the OS, forcing bigger and faster computers, which translates into greater power consumption, they will never be "green." Even if they do power down when not in use, they will still use far more energy than is needed to actually perform the task while they are on.

If Microsoft wants to truly be known as a "green" company, then they should design the next version of Windows so that it runs on less hardware than what is currently required, so we don't have keep to filling up the landfills with technically good computers that become obsolete, just to stay compatible every time Microsoft releases the latest version of Windows.

Stupid

[afidel]

If you are using AMD CoolnQuiet then turning the powersaving mode to anything but the minimal power saving profile in Windows results in running at full clock and voltage all the time. With my well ventilated Athlon 63 x2 4200+ this results in a CPU temperature jump from +10 over ambient to +20 over ambient when idle. It's true that AMD's need to select minimal power saving is completely backwards and unintuitive, but it's reality for anyone running a modern Athlon.

I'm not sure what's scarier...

[SuperJ]

"The upgrade would adjust the machine's energy-saving settings for maximum efficiency. Of course, this upgrade would have to allow critical systems to opt out. Nobody wants air traffic control computers to suddenly go into deep hibernation. But correcting for critical systems should be very simple for a company that churns out millions of lines of code every year."

Wow, this paragraph made me soil my jeans. What's scarier: a) critical systems running Windows, b) critical systems running Windows connected to

Screen savers, Our Companies savings

[acomj]

We have an intiative here where I work, (1000s of seats). Turn computers off at night. This over the last couple months has saved a significant amount of power, much more that I thought it would. This has reduced our power bill (and not everyone is doing it).

The biggest thing MS could do, is to use the screen saver to black the screen (put monitor into standby aka orange mode). This would at least reduce screen power comsumption. Its amazing when roaming around the city, the number of default windows screen savers/login screens you see running all night.

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]

Group policy ftw

[PFI_Optix]

The blogger is advocating Microsoft forcing users to accept drastic changes to the way their PCs function. Because if "opting out" were easy, we'd all do it and there would be no savings.

However, it is quite simple to use group policy and scripting to make use of energy saving features and shut down PCs when they are not being used. I know, the school district I work for uses them.

We have over 1,200 computers in the district, and every one of them will power down its monitor after 15 minutes idle. We've had to disable hibernation because it doesn't work properly on older systems, but we are powering down hard drives after 30 minutes. At the end of the day, the only workstations not powered down are administration and IT--less than 50 total.

Something not mentioned in that article: MS hasn't been able to make hibernation and suspend 100% reliable, and they've had years to work on it. Now this guy wants them to force us all to use it. No, thanks. Maybe when he gets a CS degree and can fix MS's code so that all the energy saving features work right on every PC they encounter I'll consider it, but until then this guy needs to shut his trap about things he doesn't understand.

Flaky Windows Power Management

[supremebob]

This would be a great idea if Windows power management actually worked half decently. A lot of the Windows XP machines that I worked with crash when you put them into standby mode, and even more of them will not come back out of standby without an application hanging or a hardware device disappearing from the hardware profile until you reboot the system. I'm not sure if it's a problem with Windows itself or with the drivers that manufacturers are releasing (probably a mix of both), but it's certainly not something that I could rely on if I had open applications running when I was away from my desk.

I have a hunch that this blogger is a Mac user, and hasn't experienced how bad Windows power management can be. My Mac Mini comes in and out of sleep mode without any problems (as long as I don't have my HP printer plugged into it), but that's a lot easier for Apple to do considering that they more control as to what hardware and software goes on their systems.

Impact on Spam

[RAMMS+EIN]

Besides the impact on the environment, think of the impact this could have on spam. Given that the bulk of spam comes from infected Windows desktop machines that probably don't have to be on when nobody is using the keyboard and mouse, a scheme that automatically shuts down (or suspends) these machines after a couple of minutes of no user activity could severely reduce spam.

Re:

[Enderandrew]

Without a doubt Microsoft has had a jaded past.

Yet Gates was once a man who did not believe in charity, and now he is Time's Man of the Year for his charity. Warren Buffet gave most of his wealth up to the Gates foundation.

Microsoft is embracing open-source, working on filters to save in OpenDocumentFormat, etc.

Microsoft was without a doubt, evil. I believe that Microsoft is becoming considerably less evil, perhaps in an attempt to copy-cat Google's success.

Re:

[Himring]

Valid point. I have witnessed malicious people imitating good when advantageous....

Re:

[cyberlotnet]

Prior to the anti trust cases gates/microsoft gave next to nothing to charity, He goes from dirt rich doing nothing usefull with his wealth to Time's Man of the Year.

I would love to think its all from his heart, but I think its tainted money, backdoor bribes to make people happy. There actions are to save there own ass, they are not embracing open-source they are giving in to pressure in hopes it will prevent "Antitrust suit 2"

Re:Greenest?

[Artifakt]

I agree that originally, this was tainted money, in the ways Microsoft originally made it, but I don't think the Gates foundation is a front for more manipulation. I think this really is from his heart, maybe with an occasional nudge from Melinda.
        If Bill Gates was just milking his donations for maximum publicity or leverage, would he have picked the causes he has? He could focus totally on those medical causes that matter most to the industrialized world, for example. He could avoid all the more politically controversial causes out there. When it comes to willingness to let the chips fall where they may, I'd say the Gates Foundation compares favorably to two of the biggest alternatives, the MacArthur and Ford Foundations:

http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.85522 9/k.CC2B/Home.htm [macfound.org]

http://www.fordfound.org/ [fordfound.org]

(Info on both the Ford Foundation's Sexuality and Religion divisions, and the MacArthur Foundation's Copyright law related work is accessable through these links. The latter may be of special interest to many Slashdotters. Both programs are examples of a foundation not shying away from doing what it thinks is right for fear of alienating business partners, funding sources or sections of the general public.)

        Mr. Gates could increase giving to Europe, where Microsoft has had the most trouble, and he could focus on causes that are likely to be dear to the very politicians that have pushed hardest for fines. He doesn't appear to be doing this.
        Bill Gates could also just about ignore Africa, or at least give a much smaller percentage of totals there, and still reap the same sort of publicity. Instead of his saying that computers aren't what's needed first in developing nations, he could encourage someone else to pay for more hardware everywhere, just so he could 'give' away lots of software and count that in press releases as donations worth the full retail value, even though it would actually cost him very little. His whole computer initiative goes exactly the other way. The Gates foundation only pushes computerization in areas developed enough to have libraries and similar locations, and actively avoids treating computerization as a solution where basic infrastructure such as reliable food sources, roads or water filtration are more pressing needs. They also avoid pushing computerization where political stability is suspect or obviously lacking. They don't support 'computer in every classroom' or 'every student's home' type programs, and they do pay for both machines and networking, including some pretty long haul wiring runs.

Re:

[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?

Re:

[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.

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.

Re:

[IDontAgreeWithYou]

I'd say you must be new here, but that's obviously not true (2822). People bitch all the time on here about their choices of broadband connection. I've mentioned before that in my particular area, there are two cable companies and a couple of DSL providers, and supposedly fiber is coming in the (relatively) near future. So, personally I don't have this problem, but I guess I might move someday.

Re:

[steveo777]

I, for one example, do complain about the granted monopolies in the Twin Cities area. For a while Comcast would only sell a bundled service (which they basically still have) of phone, cable, and internet for $120 ($144 after taxes etc)/month. Or you could get slower internet only for $60/month. I distinctly remember my brother yelling from across the room at the rep, "Well tell them they can take their monopoly and shove it up thier ASS!" I also remember the rep screaming, "I HEARD THAT!" But I did jus

Re:

[Himring]

I live far out in the country and have 10MB cable for $59 a month. I could go DSL now, too, for far cheaper, but don't want to get a land line.

Considering my own current internet-connectivity situation, I have no clue what you're talking about. The past? Sure, I guess. I've never thought about it. Maybe people didn't have any choices due to some sort of market control. I'll bite. I just know I never had those issues. I had ISDN when it first came out for never more than $50 a month.

But, come o

Fake Monopoly

[camperdave]

A while back I bought a laser printer. It had a suspiciously good bang for the buck considering that it could do double sided printing. The box said "Optimized for Windows" on it. No problem, a printer is a printer is a printer. Plug it in, fire text at it, and the text winds up on the paper. Fire a few special character sequences at it, and graphics come out. So what if it has drivers that make that process especially efficient in Windows. Anyways, I brought it home, set it up, tried to get my Linux box to print to it, and failed. I tried redirecting text to /dev/lp0 without success. I rebooted the machine into DOS and tried printing from there. No dice. Yet the printer's status pages would come out no problem. A few hours of Googling educated me on a new class of abominations - "winprinters". Mindless zombie hunks of metal and plastic that cannot perform their designated function unless Microsoft Windows is pulling their strings and laughing maniacally. Sorry, no drivers for Macs, or Linux. Windows only.

I brought this abomination back to the store. They were going to refuse to take it back, because I had unsealed the toner cartridge. I pointed out that the box said "Optimized for Windows", not "Exclusively for Windows", or "Must be slaved to a Windows machine, because it isn't really a printer". Fortunately, there was a nice Samsung printer with Tux emblazoned on the side (along with the Apple and Microsoft logos) that was the same price, and the sales guy let me swap. Otherwise I would have been stuck with a $1200 paperweight.

Microsoft may not be a monopoly in the strictest sense of the word, but they are a monsterous company that wields enough power that other companies are willing to lie to, and cheat, their own customers just so they can put the magic word "Windows" on their box.

Re:

[hey!]

Here is a useful definition of "restitution" from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Restitution has a special sense in moral theology. It signifies an act of commutative justice by which exact reparation as far as possible is made for an injury that has been done to another. An injury may be done to another by detaining what is known to belong to him in strict justice and by wilfully doing him damage in his property or reputation.

[emphasis mine]

This definition is more useful than the legal definition of restitution

Re:

[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 electr

Re:

[ikkonoishi]

What about the profit lost due to the company not being able to mass push updates at night without going to every computer?

Not to mention the companies that let people login remotely to their work PCs, or that have networked shares.

Re:Unsolicited Advice

[heroofhyr]

Ever hear of remote wake-up or ACPI? Even a Win98 box can be nudged out of Standby mode remotely. The network doesn't have to be fully operational 24 hours a day to receive updates and maintenance, and I doubt you're doing those updates and software installations every single night. If you are, you desperately need to rework your system because it's hanging on to life by a thread. I'm not talking about putting the computers involved in real-time processes, web servers, etc in sleep mode. That wouldn't make a lot of sense. But the dozens or hundreds of workstations the typical customer service department, the mail-room, and all the other clerical and administrative roles a large corporation has are completely unused after the employees leave and none of them except the management would ever have a need for logging in remotely. Not to mention in most of the offices I've worked in that had a Windows platform, usually NT 4 or 2000, all of the updates were run as a batch script when you first logged in. It required all of 5 minutes to complete and it gave you an excuse to go pour a cup of coffee on company time. And on a more cynical note, at least if the WSs were shutdown overnight that'd be 12+ virus- and crash-free hours not to have to worry about.

Re:Stupid blog entry

[Trailwalker]

This blogger should lead by example and turn his machine off.

Permanently.

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.

What about lock-ups, o/s crashes

[unity100]

and other amazing consequences ?

Did no one realise this one?

[forgotten_my_nick]

1. Invest in energy companies.
2. Change software to burn more energy.
3. Profit!

I think lots of people have figured that one

[Colin Smith]

1: invest in energy companies.
2: wait
3: profit

Doesn't everyone know that one? The other is.

1: Invest in banks
2: wait
3: profit

 

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:Short hardware life is bad for the enviroment

[BigDogCH]

In my experience (building and selling PCs), most users are not forced to upgrade hardware because of microsoft. Most are forced to upgrade because of their own ignorance. Their old computer becomes so clogged and bloated with spyware and other crapware, that it is slow and useless. My most recent example is a 1.6ghz system, with windows XP. It was barely usable. When asked to fix it, I said that the entire system needed to be "rebuilt".....and returned to like new condition. The price I quote for this job is $150, assuming the user will handle installing their printers, setup, etc.... This user, and all others, then just go buy a new computer because they don't want to stick $150 into "this old slow thing". I then buy their old slow thing from them for $50, turn around and sell it for $250. BTW, XP runs fine on a 500mhz system, it is the 3rd party software that is the problem, not MS.

Summary: The old computer is still being used, Microsoft didn't cause the problem, the upgrade cycle is more complex that originally obvious. Even at my employer, hardware is on something like a 6 year cycle, sometimes more. Even after that, most of the machine is recycled when the recyclers will take them.

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

Re:

[bblboy54]

The same people that play the latest and greatest games?

Sorry, I'm not a gamer. I've been holding out for Duke Nukem Forever.

I read

[Skythe]

The title of the article as "Microsoft One Step From World's Greatest Company"
Suffice to say i almost fell off my chair

Re:

[Poltras]

It is, and is Energy Star compliant as well!

Re:

[jimicus]

Not to mention, a significant number (I'd say the majority) of the world's computers are, to a greater or lesser extent, running on managed networks where such things as power-saving settings are set by policy.

Re:

[CarpetShark]

Wrong. Microsoft became a monopoly by many underhanded tactics, that they're STILL using, and are still in court for.

As for them being the greenest company... I'll have to put that down to lies, damned lies, and statistics. Microsoft have done a lot to harm competition, and as such, have stiffled innovative new technologies. Many of those technologies could have been greener. Now, we'll never know.

Microsoft is one line of code away from greenest

[jdbartlett]

Microsoft is just one line away from becoming the greenest company on earth:

RGB(0,256,0)

It's like green, but it's "one more" than green. It's the greenest.

I haven't seen an app this green since I switched from AS/400.