Monthly Archives: March 2008 - Page 2

Runaway wind turbine explodes – with awesome power!

Posted by Chris Whittome on March 21, 2008 Comments Off

Safe, clean, renewable… well not quite as safe a you thought. Following last month’s spectacular wind turbine self-destruction, which prompted the Danish climate minister to launch an investigation, 10 wind energy companies have formed a consortium to make wind turbines more reliable. A noble effort, but a little late for the 36 and counting instances of turbine failure, which the folks at the Industrial Wind Action Group are assiduously keeping track of.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3FZtmlHwcA&eurl=http://earth2tech.com/2008/03/21/wind-industry-to-study-exploding-turbines/[/video]

But just think of the potential for having super-strength wind turbines and the power they could generate of we could keep them facing the wind? Ideas like this could pave the way for super massive jet turbines to harness predictable storm conditions such as the Katabatic wind in Antarctica.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz2SeEzxMuE[/video]

In the meantime, the Reliawind Project led by Gamesa is seeking ways to enhance safety.

Wind powered computers on the horizon

Posted by Chris Whittome on March 20, 2008 Comments Off

The world’s computing power should be moved from desktop computers and company servers to remote outposts where renewable energy such as wind and solar power is abundant, according to a Cambridge University computer expert.

With carbon emissions from computing set to rise rapidly in the coming decades, he said his idea could significantly reduce the contribution made by computers to climate change. “There’s something very special about computing power which is very different from heating your house,” said Prof Andy Hopper. “Computing power can be moved around the world and can be done anywhere in the world where the energy is available.”

According to UK government figures, business computing is responsible for 2.8m tonnes of CO2 emissions a year. The UK’s total emissions are just over 554.5m tonnes. Office equipment (of which computers make up about a third) is responsible for 15% of the emissions from a typical office.

Moving energy via the national grid entails significant losses. Hopper’s scheme would work by shifting computer operations to servers close to wind farms that are working at full tilt. On a global scale a network of energy producers could be called upon depending on where energy was most abundant at any time.

“I think it is very interesting to contemplate a world with a smallish number of server farms, huge ones, which are deployed in places where the energy is produced,” he told a conference at the Royal Society in London yesterday. “The whole point is that we are using energy that would otherwise be lost. It is more efficient, more appropriate, cheaper to use it in situ.”

Greenpeace: Nintendo not eco-friendly in Greener Guide to Electronics report

Posted by Chris Whittome on March 20, 2008 Comments Off

Nintendo is apparently flunking its environmental responsibilities after scoring a 0/10 last year for company policy on handling toxic waste. Greenpeace claim it still doesn’t make enough effort to prove its ‘environmental credentials’ by openly presenting eco-friendly solutions.

While Microsoft has improved upon last year’s score of 2.7/10 by fast tracking plans to reduce toxic output, the latest Guide to Greener Electronics report on industry e-waste shows a marginal increase for Nintendo.
The report states: “Nintendo remains the odd one out of the 18 companies in the Guide, without any public time lines to eliminate the worst toxic chemicals or a global recycling policy for the millions of products it sells every year”

The latest Greener Guide to Electronics shows a marginal increase for the Japanese manufacturer, following last year’s report when Nintendo scored the lowest mark possible in the review.

“Nintendo remains the odd one out of the 18 companies in the Guide, without any public time lines to eliminate the worst toxic chemicals or a global recycling policy for the millions of products it sells every year,” said the report.

“If Nintendo has better policies why not make them public like the other 17 companies in the Guide?”
Of Nintendo’s direct competitors, Microsoft has improved its ratings in the three months since the last review by bringing forward a deadline to eliminate toxic PVC and chemicals which inhibit ignition, while Sony remains the leading console maker, although Greenpeace notes “it has yet to introduce any green innovation in the PlayStation.”
Greenpeace publishes the Greener Electronics Guide to highlight the electronics’ industry’s efforts to tackle e-waste.

This year, Samsung and Toshiba came out on top, with Nokia, Sony, Dell and Lenovo also noted for their public efforts to deal with toxic waste.

Is Greenpeace doing enough to challenge electronics manufacturers?

Posted by Chris Whittome on March 19, 2008 Comments Off

Like other eco-consumerists, I closely follow what Greenpeace are up to and praise their full frontal involvement with greener electronics. Their pressure group activities are of significant value, but they fail to address the real issues of the consumer electronics industry. Their activity at Cebit focused on an idea that manufacturers were more interested in being seen to be green than actually being green. Greenpeace wants manufacturers to make their products more recyclable and to reduce energy consumption – a fair point, but Greenpeace have so far failed to tackle head on the political hot potato of massive overproduction through unrestrained product commoditization.

Greenpeace focuses more on making green than making less…

The bottom line which Greenpeace should start making waves about

Electronics manufacturers today are experiencing historic revenues. The underlying reason is that electronics sold today are rapidly superseded by newer models so that they appear outdated. This has been most notable over the last 10 years.

The result has been a significant downward shift in a product’s life cycle which has helped to create the throw away society that we live in today. A decade ago you may have had a camera for 10 years – these days some will be looking to upgrade it after 10 months.

In the last 5 years Apple have sold nearly 100 million iPods. 5 years previous it took DVD players the same time to sell just 15 million units, which was a record at the time. In fact 21 Million 6th Generation iPod upgrades were sold in the last quarter alone.

Apple is not an extreme example. Blu-ray and LCD TVs are both projected to sell even more units over the next 3 to 4 years.

This level of production is now creating an e-waste crisis which can only partially be effected by making products which are relatively greener. Manufacturers need to be seen to be green, but they need productivity to keep expanding and the two cannot realistically co-exist – something that Greenpeace either entirely ignores or completely overlooks.

Being seen to be green has become more of a sophisticated marketing exercise, while productivity in the industry has increased more than 10 fold over the last decade.

As consumers we all love consumer electronics, and there is a way for us to be greener when buying them. trade 2 save the planet wants to encourage consumers to do what Greenpeace hasn’t really addressed: Reduce the demand for new consumer electronics by choosing to buy pre-owned electronics where possible – and importantly trade in that product to someone else when you no longer use it.

By doing this a product’s life span can be increased 4 or 5 fold – that’s 4 to 5 times less e-waste and 4 to 5 times less demand on energy by the global manufacturing industry.

Product life cycles are now so short that most pre-owned products show little sign of age or wear. All those iPhones bought last year which will be upgraded to the next 3G model will all be in great condition. Consumers could buy these pre-owned iPhones on auction sites, but a majority of consumers don’t because many aren’t confident of the condition and there’s no warranty if they develop a fault.

Trade 2 save will buy from customers who want to trade-in their old iPhones as well as other products. Every product traded-in will be tested and every product is then repackaged and sold on with a warranty so customers can feel confident about buying pre-owned.

Trade 2 save will stock all the major brands of consumer electronics, including Computing, Gaming, Cellphones, Movies and Apple. With increased confidence in pre-owned electronics and more companies providing this type of service, it may become as common to have a pre-owned laptop or iPhone as it is to have a pre-owned car. This is not what manufacturers will want because demand for new product imported from China would diminish.

The car industry fought the idea of second hand dealerships for decades. They eventually gave in and now they run their own pre-owned franchises. Imagine if today (like consumer electronics) 90% of all cars bought were bought brand new? America would be one massive rusty car dump. As it is, India and China are fast becoming the consumer electronics/e-waste dumps of the western world.

Manufacturers will claim credit for making products greener over the coming years, and making them greener is of vital importance. However, with productivity set to increase at the same rate as it has done over the last decade, the biggest cause of e-waste is being overlooked.

Greenpeace question Cebit greeness

Posted by Chris Whittome on March 17, 2008 2 comments

Greenpeace questioned the real green motivations by computer hardware manufacturers at the Cebit exhibition last week. Cebit’s commitments to Green IT were in fact disappointingly underwhelming.

The question is whether “Green IT” is really being taken that seriously beyond the PR activity and the glossy brochure work lovingly reproduced on recycled touchy-feely Hemp paper.

There were no toxics-free hardware demonstrations, no solutions to the problems with e-waste, or recycling – just an un-manned booth lost behind the “tree of commitment“ – ironically very under watered and wilting – all the servers in the house were clearly heating up its atmosphere; a global microcosm if ever I saw one.

Toxic chemicals, e-waste and the low recycling rate aren’t a big issue there. Many “Green IT” companies are exhibiting software and hardware technologies to reduce energy consumption in data centers. There, the search for less energy consumption is of course not mainly motivated by ecological reasons, but by financial reasons. The computer manufacturer Fujitsu Siemens also announced a zero watt screen which zero-consuming stand-by mode. Thus, energy (bottom line) efficiency is all the rave. e-waste and ever shorter product life-cycles thanks to over production – not such a hot topic.

There was no one at Cebit advocating that consumers buy and sell pre-owned and used consumer electronics as a way of reducing e-waste. This is not surprising, as any significant uptake on such a proposal would directly impact the profits of the consumer electronics industry.

Greenpeace did find some little innovative and eco-friendly things in the award-winner exhibition of International Forum Design at Cebit. One of the product design awards was awarded for a product called USB-Cell – batteries which have an integrated USB port and can be charged without a special charger, so you’ll never be without power.

Cebit did a good job in giving the impression that “Green IT” is the big thing but the tree of commitment’s condition said it all.

How to Choose a Greener Graphics Card

Posted by admin on March 16, 2008 2 comments

Energy Consumption is an issue for Graphics Cards, however, to make any computer hardware greener, trading-in old graphics card in or buying pre-owned is a sure way of making sure it will stay off of the e-waste tip for some time to come. It’ll also stop the person you sell it to from buying a new one.

Chris Whittome

Source: Andrew Binstock at Greener Computing

In this column, I have previously examined energy-saving options on processors and hard disks. This time around, I’d like to examine one of the other principal energy sinks on the standard PC: graphics cards.

Graphics cards are a confusing area of technology because almost all the attention and press the cards receive is dedicated to the high-end, super-expensive cards favored by gamers and hardware aficionados. Those users live and die by the next release of whiz-bang features and the number of anti-aliased triangles that can be displayed.

But if you’re choosing graphics capabilities for a business system, the likelihood that anti-aliased triangles are important to your choice is close to nil. And that means that you’ll be able to save energy, because generally, the more powerful the graphics card, the more electricity it uses.   How people use their computers determines what kind of cards they need, and the power that the cards will use. Most knowledge workers have very modest graphical needs. As long as they can see their Excel charts, enjoy basic Web 2.0 features, and view the occasional video clip on a single monitor, they are content.   For many users, this capability is delivered by the video capabilities built directly into the motherboard. They don’t need a separate graphics card. The motherboard graphics system has modest but sufficient capabilities. This inexpensive option results in systems that consume less electricity.

The second tier of users consists of those who have somewhat more demanding needs. In the business world, these users tend to be software developers and “power users.” They don’t necessarily need faster graphics. Rather, they require a graphics card that can drive more than large LCD monitors. (By large, I mean a monitor that requires screen resolution greater than 1280 x 768.) The graphics cards required to drive multiple large monitors vary from entry-level to mid-level products. In most cases, the entry-level products are sufficient.

For example, software developers, who are a breed apart when it comes to system needs, rarely have to do more than display code, Web pages, and some basic animations. What they do need is multiple large monitors. So, for them video cards such as the Nvidia Quadro series are sufficient. For example, the Quadro NVS 290 supports two monitors at 1920 x 1200 resolution and consumes a mere 21 watts (with a street price of currently $160 or so). For users with somewhat higher requirements or those needing basic 3D graphics, the Nvidia Quadro FX 570 will almost surely suffice. (It supports two monitors at 2560 x 1600 resolution, has a street price of around $200, and requires 38W of power.)

One question that will surely arise in keeping graphics-card prowess and power consumption in line with user requirements is how to measure the graphics performance as experienced by the user. The most effective ways is with the ViewPerf benchmark developed by the Standard Performance Evaluation Corp. (SPEC).

SPEC is a vendor-neutral, hardware benchmarking organization. While most SPEC benchmarks must be purchased, ViewPerf is available at no cost at SPEC.org. Release 10 of the benchmark ships as a Windows program (while version 9 runs on Windows and Linux). It’s a large executable and takes a good 10 minutes to run. It finishes up by providing a table of six performance results for the graphics subsystem. Take the average of these and you have a single-number rating for the graphics capabilities. You can then test other cards to see whether they provide comparable performance. Some manufacturers, such as Nvidia provide their cards’ ratings on each of the tests, so you can perform highly detailed comparisons.

These comparisons are particularly important when it comes to the small group of users who require (or at least think they require) very high-end hardware. Ultra-high end graphics cards are monsters of consumption. For example, the Nvidia Quadro FX 5600 requires 171 watts of power (and sell for more than $3000). Typically, such cards are the domain of specialists who use high-end workstations. These include engineers doing very complex 3D modeling and some financial analysis.

Often, though, users’ requirements can be satisfied at lower prices and significantly reduced power consumption. To prove the point, the Nvidia 4600 has nearly the same performance profile as the 5600, but it costs half the price and consumes nearly 25 percent less power. Using SPEC tests will help determine performance metrics for cards; vendor spec sheets will tell you how much power each card consumes. In that way, you’ll be able to choose less power-hungry cards, without sacrificing performance.

In sum, the graphics card is a PC component that can easily consume the majority of a system’s power. As a result, it’s important to carefully match the user’s needs with the performance of a given card. By taking measurements of needs and capabilities and matching them carefully, you can significantly lower power consumption, heat generation, and, of course, the price tag.

Sony Takes First in Greenpeace Green IT Survey

Posted by admin on March 16, 2008 Comments Off

Source: GreenerComputing.com

HANOVER, Germany, Mar. 6, 2008 — By producing the only products to score over the 50 percent mark in a survey of business and consumer electronics products, Sony’s Vaio notebook and a Sony Ericsson mobile phone and PDA were the most environmentally friendly models on the market — but the results show just how far the industry as a whole has to come.

Greenpeace, which has been releasing a quarterly ranking of electronics manufacturers, released a similar survey during this week’s CeBIT conference.

The survey, “Searching for Greener Electronics,” studied 37 products voluntarily submitted by 14 electronics manufacturers on four sets of criteria: energy efficiency, use of hazardous materials, product lifecycle and innovation / marketing, awarding points on a 1 to 10 scale. Although Sony swept the winners with models in the notebook computer, mobile phone and PDA categories, those products were notable only because they were the sole products to break the 5-point limit.

Big Business: Nokia Recycling in East Africa, Apple to take back iPods

Posted by Chris Whittome on March 15, 2008 Comments Off

Source: GreenerComputing.com

Getting consumers to ‘recycle’ their old iPods or cellphones by generously handing them in for free is becoming a big business, with huge potential for major players like Apple and Nokia, as product life cycles continue to decrease.

Apple will now accept and recycle iPods and any brand of cell phone free of charge. The announcement also comes on the heels of an article in Condé Nast Portfolio naming Apple one of the country’s “Toxic Ten” corporations, partially because of it’s limited recycling program.

Apple offers free recycling of any computer, monitor and peripheral equipment, but only with the purchase of an Apple computer or monitor. The computing giant will now take back phones and iPods with no purchase required, and will also give customers a 10 percent discount on a new iPod when they recycle an old one.

However, iPods or cellphones of any re-usable quality may be resold in bulk to second hand resellers who may pass them on through outsets such as eBay. Few of these products may be tested prior to re-sale or given an form of warranty.

The second hand consumer electronics business is growing and big names are cashing in on the generosity of consumers to hand in their cast offs for free.

From June this year, US consumers will be able to trade-in their second hand consumer iPods and cellphones for cash or store credit at trade 2 save.com. All products will be tested, graded and given a warranty before being re-sold via the trade 2 save website.

At Apple (like trade 2 save), customers will mail in their pre-owned electronics, and both companies will provide pre-paid shipping labels and mailers. Apple also accepts batteries from Apple products at Apple stores for free. The company processes all recyclable items in the United States. Nokia is also expanding its recycling initiative, but is instead offering recycling in more places.

Nokia has launched a cell phone and accessories takeback program in East Africa, according to news reports. Customers can drop off items from any phone manufacturer at collection centers in Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, Tanzania and Uganda. The items will be shipped to and processed in Europe.

First EPEAT Gold Monitor with New Visuals Portfolio from Lenova

Posted by Chris Whittome on March 15, 2008 Comments Off

Lenovo today introduced the industry’s first EPEAT Gold rated monitor – the ThinkVision L193p – as part of a new portfolio of PC monitors designed for business users. The portfolio of five new monitors also includes the ThinkVision L190x monitor featuring the slimmest bezel in the industry at just 6.6 millimeters.

“With the first PC monitor rated EPEAT Gold, Lenovo has achieved a milestone in the greening of the electronics industry,” said Jeff Omelchuck, executive director, Green Electronics Council. “The EPEAT system helps purchasers evaluate, compare and select PC products based on their environmental attributes. By developing a monitor that achieves EPEAT’s Gold ranking Lenovo is demonstrating its commitment to providing purchasers with high quality, environmentally responsible products.”

Lenovo now offers a complete EPEAT Gold rated solution by pairing the ThinkCentre A61e desktop with the ThinkVision L193p monitor. The EPEAT tool evaluates products based on 51 environmental criteria in the areas of reduction/elimination of environmentally sensitive materials, design for end of life, product longevity/lifecycle extension, energy conservation, end of life management, packaging and corporate performance. To earn EPEAT Gold status, the ThinkVision L193p monitor had to meet all 23 required criteria as well as at least 20 of EPEAT’s 28 optional criteria. The monitor is the first product in the EPEAT registry to use more than 25% post-consumer recycled content in its plastic parts.

“Lenovo has delivered a comprehensive line of energy efficient and environmentally responsible products, from notebooks to desktops to monitors,” said Jim Christensen, director, Global Desktop and Visuals Marketing, Lenovo. “We have more than 40 products that are listed within the EPEAT system with our whole line of Performance Series monitors rated at least EPEAT Silver. The EPEAT Gold rated ThinkVision L193p monitor is our first step toward our goal of elevating all of our monitors to this status.”

In addition to the EPEAT Gold rating, all of Lenovo’s new Performance Series monitors are TCO’03 certified by TCO Development. This certification addresses ergonomics, emissions, energy and ecology. All of Lenovo’s LCD monitors also meet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star® 4.0 requirements for energy efficiency also required by EPEAT. When combined with Lenovo’s ThinkCentre A61e desktop, the solution is 57 percent more efficient than previous Lenovo desktops paired with a 19-inch CRT monitor.

The 19-inch monitor’s 160/160 degree viewing angle, high contrast ratio, five milliseconds response time and support for high bandwidth digital content protection (HDCP) and analog and DVI-D signals provide users an excellent viewing experience. An ergonomic stand also provides flexibility for positioning the display.

ThinkVision Monitors Deliver Business-Class Performance Measuring just 6.6 millimeters, the ThinkVision L190x monitor’s bezel is the slimmest in the industry. This thinness makes it ideal for multiple monitor environments, helping eliminate the distraction that can occur from the seam between monitors. Pairing two of these 19-inch monitors provides more than twice the viewing area of a 27-inch monitor at considerably less cost. The monitor also provides a high contrast ratio of 1500:1 and color gamut to create vivid colors and four USB ports for connection to a variety of devices such as battery chargers. Users can also switch from portrait to landscape mode easily with the monitor’s automatic rotation function.

For single monitor business use, Lenovo’s ThinkVision L194 Wide monitor offers an excellent 16×10 wide viewing experience in a 19-inch widescreen with a high contrast ratio of 1000:1 and support for HDCP as well as analog and DVI-D signals. Lenovo’s ThinkVision L171 and L151 monitors provide quality business-class performance for the general purpose and back office applications.

The monitors follow Lenovo’s recent introduction of the ThinkVision L220x Wide monitor, the market’s first 22-inch widescreen monitor with a WUXGA resolution screen. Small enough to fit on a desk, the monitor provides rich colors and high resolution drawing less power than 24-inch monitors. Combined with the ThinkCentre A61e desktop, the monitor helps users save close to $30 in annual energy costs.

Pricing and Availability The ThinkVision L193p, L190x, L194w, L171 and L151 monitors start at $299, $379, $259, $239 and $199, respectively. They are available beginning in November through Business Partners or through www.lenovo.com.

The Lenovo is a step forward in power efficiency, howver, to make it truely green, we hope it will be traded in readil and bought and sold pre-owned at trade 2 save. Only then will we be happy with its performance.

About EPEAT EPEAT is a system to help purchasers in the public and private sectors evaluate, compare and select desktop computers, notebooks and monitors based on their environmental attributes. EPEAT also provides a clear and consistent set of performance criteria for the design of products, and provides an opportunity for manufacturers to secure market recognition for efforts to reduce the environmental impact of its products. EPEAT, whose development was supported by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, rates computer desktops, laptops, and monitors based on 51 environmental criteria. All EPEAT registered products must meet 23 mandatory environmental criteria. An additional 28 optional criteria are used to determine whether products earn EPEAT Bronze, Silver or Gold recognition. EPEAT is managed by the nonprofit Green Electronics Council, based in Portland, OR.

About Lenovo Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) is dedicated to building the world’s best engineered personal computers. Lenovo’s business model is built on innovation, operational efficiency and customer satisfaction as well as a focus on investment in emerging markets. Formed by Lenovo Group’s acquisition of the former IBM Personal Computing Division, the company develops, manufactures and markets reliable, high-quality, secure and easy-to-use technology products and services worldwide. Lenovo has major research centers in Yamato, Japan; Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, China; and Raleigh, North Carolina. For more information see www.lenovo.com.

Spot the difference – Canon’s new PowerShot Upgrade

Posted by Chris Whittome on March 14, 2008 2 comments

Out with the old: The Canon PowerShot SD870 IS

And in with the new: The Canon PowerShot SD890 IS

Now I don’t know about you, but I prefer the previous styling and I’m going to miss the 3 inch LDC display – of course, this always gives Canon the opportunity to make it bigger again for the next model a few months later.

Now let’s get inside:

Apart from body style and zoom levels (thanks to 2 extra mega pixels), the camera is not really a step up in terms of technology at all.

I get a tad cynical about new models when all they’re really doing is making a minute style change. The lens, red eye correction and image stabilization etc all haven’t changed from the SD870 IS. And 10 MP instead of 8MP is meaningless on its own. It has got a view finder, but this is at the expense of the previously great LCD screen, which now is merely adequate.

Bottom line: It does mean that all us folk with 6 or 8 mega pixels will start to feel very inadequate until we upgrade to a 10 Mega Pixel BIG BOY. Which is what it’s all about of course, because they’ll sell more of the same cameras to us – and we’ll send more of the same non-recyclable waste back to India and China.

Any real difference to the SD870 IS – judge for yourself -

Shawn Arch at Gadgetell writes: “What is different about the three cameras is body style, LCD size, and zoom level. The SD 890 has a 5x optical zoom with a 2.5-inch LCD screen. The 5x zoom is equivalent to a 185mm lens. With a 3x zoom, equivalent to a 105mm lens, the SD790 contains a 3-inch LCD screen. Rounding off the bunch is the SD 770 with a 2.5-inch LCD and a 3x optical zoom.

The PowerShot SD890 IS, PowerShot SD790 IS, and the PowerShot SD770 IS are set to hit shelves with an estimated retail price of $399.99, $349.99 and $299.99 respectively.”

As far as we’re concerned, this is not an upgrade, more a side grade to encourage customers to get rid of the old and buy the new when the old one works fine and hasn’t got a scratch on it. At trade 2 save you’ll be able to buy, sell and trade all your consumer electronics pre-owned or used, so you won’t have to spend a fortune upgrading to keep ahead with technology. You’ll be able to cross trade too, so you can trade in your old movies or cellphones as well as your old digital camera for the one you want. Plus you’ll be saving money and saving the planet by buying pre-owned, and have the confidence of a one year warranty.

« Previous page | Next page »