Weighing In On The Green Debate

Last year, the Test Center built a green PC. We thought it would be interesting and give us a way to examine the claims many manufacturers were making of the first-green-this or most-green-that. Although we realized that there were various definitions of what "green" meant, we thought, from a business perspective, that a system with comparable performance to a typical PC, while drawing less power, would be where most of our readers' interest lies.

With this goal in mind, we sourced parts and put together a system. Soon after, we published a story on what we did and the lessons learned.

Although the expected comments of "this (insert component name here) draws .000000001 watts less than the one you used" were received, what took us by surprise were the number of e-mails and comments from people who passionately felt that our approach did not live up to the definition of green. Even more so, others thought that the whole green initiative was a bunch of hogwash and "IT professionals don't care about green."

While it may be true that most IT professionals don't consider green a priority, their superiors usually do, and we believe that is enough to make most IT departments at least take power consumption into consideration. More interesting, though, is the fact that in computing, there is no standard meaning for "green."

Many people believe that a product is green when as much as possible of its makeup is built using recycled and/or recyclable parts. Others deem it has to do with the carbon footprint left during its production. And some think it's a combination of the two.

But what about our definition? Although it is possible—and likely—that our components were not recycled and that their production probably left a carbon footprint, shouldn't the environmental effects of their use also be taken into consideration?

So, here we are in 2009, and the Test Center is gearing up to build the next generation of our green PC. Should we follow the same guidelines as we did for the first one? What about recyclability and carbon footprints?

In the end, much of the decision will be made based, at least in part, on the components available; we are somewhat limited by what the manufacturers feel the definition of green is.

On May 12, the Test Center will be presenting our next green PC live at the All Systems Go event in San Jose, Calif. Over the next few months, we will be planning, building and testing it. Write to me and let the Test Center know which definition of green you think we should be focusing on.

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