What's the reading? Verdiem's dashboard can be customized to view energy and carbon emissions reductions.
(Credit: Verdiem)Verdiem on Monday is expected to release an add-on to its PC power-management software that gives people a customizable view of energy savings and carbon emissions reductions.
The Seattle-based company said that the software, called Sustainability Dashboard, offers a visual display for a number of metrics, such as savings over time, and translates that into the equivalent of cars removed from the road or trees planted.
It works with Surveyor, a program that lets IT departments automatically put computers on standby mode on a schedule. For example, it can turn off PCs at night that are left on or put a PC on standby after being idle for more than an hour.
The company says it can save a business between $20 and $60 per year by setting up power-management policies and that payback for the upfront investment can come in less than a year.
The company developed the Dashboard product so those savings can be better shared within a business.
"The challenge when you talk about green IT is how do you show tangible results--the economic savings, the carbon reductions--and share that real-time information," said Brett Goodwin, Verdiem's vice president of marketing.
The Dashboard can be customized to view different data--such as changing the date range for money savings--and can be embedded in companies' intranets. Because it works with Surveyor's server-based software, it cannot be embedded in public Web pages.
Verdiem also makes a free PC power-management tool called Edison for individual PC users.
MTI Micro and Korean manufacturer NeoSolar said on Thursday they will build prototype ultra-mobile PCs powered by fuel cells.
The two companies said they will develop digital devices that use MTI Micro's Mobion fuel cells, which use liquid methanol cartridges as a fuel.
Dr. James Y. Yu, president of NeoSolar, showing off his company's Wibrain ultra mobile PC and the Mobion chip.
(Credit: NeoSolar)The development could lead to external chargers, snap-on attachments or devices with the Mobion fuel cell embedded in them, the companies said.
Fuel cells are being developed for a wide range of applications, from back-up electricity in buildings and data centers to transportation.
Rather drawing on tanks of hydrogen to make electricity in a fuel cell, MTI Micro's Mobion uses methanol. The advantage is that it's a liquid fuel that can be easily transported and store, say backers. The byproduct of using the fuel is water and carbon dioxide, in relatively small amounts.
MTI has signed on a partners to develop GPS devices and digital cameras that use its fuel cells.
Other consumer electronics manufacturers, including Sharp, are also developing direct methanol to fuel cell chargers.
The number of personal computers in use around the world has exceeded 1 billion and will double by 2014, with most growth coming from developing markets, according to Gartner research released Monday.
A 12 percent annual increase would amount to more than 2 billion PCs in use by 2014, according to a report that counted installed machines rather than laptops and desktops sold.
Emerging markets will account for 70 percent of the next billion PCs to come online, Gartner analysts suggested. They named dropping prices and improved Internet access as factors driving that trend.
Fifty-eight percent of today's PCs are owned by U.S., European, and Japanese users, Gartner found.
This year, some 180 million computers, or 16 percent of those currently in use globally, will be retired.
"We estimate a fifth of these, or some 35 million PCs, will be dumped into landfill with little or no regard for their toxic content," Meike Escherich, principal research analyst at Gartner, said in a statement. The challenge of disposing safely of electronics waste will also expand in developing markets in the coming years, she added.
Talk about low-hanging fruit.
Verdiem on Wednesday is expected to release an update of its software that monitors desktop Windows PCs and puts them in low-power mode when they're idle. A PC usually wastes about two-thirds of the energy it uses.
The application also gathers data on energy usage of PCs on a network so that companies can measure their energy savings and reductions of carbon emissions.
Renewable energy sources are flashy but tend to be more expensive than conventional power.
Verdiem's software lets companies measure energy savings or greenhouse gas reductions.
(Credit: Verdiem)By contrast, energy-efficiency technologies typically have a quicker payback while eliminating waste.
Verdiem's Surveyor application can pay for itself within a year by saving between $20 and $60 per PC, according to a company.
For a large corporate network, that's serious money: a 10,000 PC network could mean half a million dollars in savings, said Matt Heinz, senior director of marketing at the company.
Energy in data centers is getting more attention because usage is going up rapidly with more Web users coming online and more power-hungry servers.
PCs and monitors, meanwhile, are 40 percent of IT budgets' energy usage, according to Gartner. Severs, including cooling, take up around about 23 percent, with the rest in communications, networking, and printers.
Energy conservation is becoming a concern both for IT organizations facing rising costs and people responsible for corporate sustainability initiatives, according to Gartner.
Verdiem touts its environmental credentials: last year, its software saved $6 million and prevented almost 38,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases, the company said. That's the equivalent of about 4 million gallons of gas saved, or 8,200 cars not driven for a year.
Verdiem Surveyor 5.0 has a console to centrally configure different devices and additional reporting tools. It also has better integration with Windows Vista and integrates with Intel's vPro PC management technology so that it can access machines that aren't turned on.
The company has about 200 customers.
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