Bidding Farewell to eBay and Four Takeaways on Computer Power Management

.  For example, while it is true that a laptop consumes less energy than a desktop during the use stage of its lifecycle, the performance capability of a laptop may be insufficient for certain IT environments, particularly those that run 24/7 and are heavily used for multimedia and programming.  I found it necessary to stratify the computing performance needs by different types of employees, so that each type of employee had the lowest-energy computer possible without sacrificing performance.  Interestingly, lifecycle analyses suggest that laptops also consume less energy than desktops in the manufacturing stage, and therefore have an overall lower energy consumption total over desktops.  Given that desktops are typically priced lower than laptops, this indicates that the price of desktops is not indicative of the energy use in manufacture.
Include Both Purchasing and Behavioral Solutions.  When addressing computer power management, a policy is incomplete if only focused on purchasing low-power computers (i.e. EnergyStar rated).  IT organizations need a systematic method for ensuring the EnergyStar power-saving settings are being used by employees.  Because behavior change can be so difficult, power management software provides an excellent solution that allows IT to override excessive energy consumption by individual computers.

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