October 2007 Archives

Not that we need to justify our love of tech and the environment, but new data from IDC makes it clear that the concept of green IT is starting to catch on beyond those geeky little enclaves.

We are no longer alone, whoo-hoo!

According to an IDC survey, 80 percent of executives say that green IT is growing in importance for their operation, and 43 percent say they consider a vendor's "greenness" when selecting their suppliers.

That's all; just thought you should know.

Excess is a hallmark of this ghoulish day. So how are tree huggers to cope? Easy, just give in!

EcoGeek has links to several sites in their Halloween coverage. Extra points for the the car that runs on blood. Ew!

Yahoo Green offers costume ideas in case you spent Mischief Night toilet papering everything in sight. Poor neighbor's cat :(

Treehugger has the DIY winners of the green category of Etsy's Handmade Halloween Costume Contest. Sorry, you can't un-see it.

And that horrifying bee saga? In light of the recent "Silence of the Bees" episode of Nature on PBS, I thought I'd link to The Daily Green's roundup that chronicles every twist in the plight affecting our little partners in agriculture. Here's hoping that this is one scary story that ends happily.

Happy Halloween!

Manufacturing processors consumes a lot of silicon, which also happens to be a prime material in solar cells. IBM has come up with a solution to reclaim wasted silicon using water and an abrasive pad. The idea is pretty neat and lends some insight into the chip making process, especially the measures they take to safeguard their IP:

...Often, however, recyclers use acidic chemicals to erase the circuitry from wafers. IBM had been sandblasting its wafers to be sure no trade secrets on the wafers got out.

Now IBM engineers have developed a process for removing the circuitry with an abrasive pad and water, which saves money and leaves the silicon in better shape for reuse. IBM, which makes chips for server computers, video game consoles and other electronics, has been using the process at its chip facility in Essex Junction, Vt., and plans to do so at its plant in East Fishkill, N.Y.

Being able to get more "monitors" (test wafers) in this manner lifts a little of the supply constraints the solar industry is experiencing and saves IBM $1.5 million a year. True, not a huge amount for IBM but it's a more efficient use of resources all-around.

A win-win!

http://green.msn.com

That above is the URL for MSN's new green channel that was just launched today. What can you expect?

It's a pretty slick production, filled with articles, tools and videos. Right off the bat there's a pretty interesting (and timely) article called "Does Daylight Savings Time Really Save Money?" Plus tons more culled from partner sites and publications, including MSNBC, The Daily Green, Conservation International, Environmental Defense, Grist.org, TreeHugger.com and StopGlobalWarming.org.

Why build a distinct eco-subsite? Crazy demand for all things green:

MSN Green addresses a growing demand for green news and information, as measured by traffic and visitor click-throughs on the network's other channels. The webcast of the July 7, 2007, environmental-awareness concerts on liveearth.msn.com was the most popular online entertainment event in history based on simultaneous viewers, generating more than 15 million streams the day of the concerts and surpassing the number of people who watched the event on TV.

The verdict: tentatively bookmarked.

Last week, Intel announced that Fab 32, the $3 billion, 1 million square foot chipmaking facility for the company's upcoming 45nm chips (aka Penryn), opened its doors in Arizona. Good news! This means that we have to look forward to even more energy efficient server and desktop processors in the months following Penryn's Nov. 12th launch.

Even so, Intel doesn't want us to ignore the strides the company’s new plant is taking to limit the damage to the environment.

Intel's industry-leading 45nm process results in a 15 percent reduction in global warming emissions, and Fab 32 makes use of Intel Arizona's innovative water conservation and reuse program which conserves more than 70 percent of the water.

The company also announced that it intends to seek certification for the new fab as the company's first official Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) factory based on new criteria being developed for facilities of this kind. LEED is a green building rating system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council that provides a set of standards for environmentally sustainable construction and requires several months of operating data before certification can be completed. The certification would demonstrate that Fab 32 meets the highest environmental standards and reflects Intel's history of commitment to environmental leadership.

Now, I would like to see more concrete numbers behind that 15 percent reduction (vs. 65 nm fabs?!) but even LEED certification is a nice step. Dave Stangis, Intel's Director of Corporate Responsibility, offers more insight in this blog post.

Update: Engadget has a nice little roundup of early Penryn reviews. In a word: want!

Looks like the Green Grid has quite a job ahead...

At the recent Data Center Decisions conference, organizers found that while many attendees were planning new data centers, few were making theirs expressly green.

When users at the Data Center Decisions conference were asked if they planned to build a new data center within the next year, a sea of hands went up. Unfortunately, when the 300 or so attendees were asked if their companies are aggressively investigating "green" infrastructures, few hands went up.

Sadness. But wait, shouldn't LEED help in this regard?

Because LEED was created with office buildings in mind, the standard drives "perverse" design incentives for data centers to earn credits for certification: for example, adding bike racks to reduce vehicle emissions instead of giving credits for making infrastructure change -- like using server virtualization -- that save power, Stansberry said.

Ooh, that burns me up. Luckily, organizations including the aforementioned Green Grid, the Uptime Institute and EPA are lobbying for a LEED-DC standard.

Lobby hard, friends!

For geeks, the annual Wired Test gadgetpalooza is required reading -- and just before the holiday season kicks off, too. Why not just drop in some Amazon "add to wishlist" links while you're at it? Geez...

Anyway, the issue offers an at-a-glance way of helping you decide whether your electronic object of desire is worth the cash (handy PDF at Cool Tools, thanks Boing Boing!). This year, there were some surprises. For instance, an Olevia took home top honors among TVs in the 38- to 49-inch range and an Olympus beat out Canon and Nikon in SLRs. But one question lingered for me.

Where are all the green gadgets?

A handful of green funding items that caught my attention...

GE, Chevron investing big-time in clean technology - VentureBeat

VCs Keep Bringing the Green to Greentech - Greentech Media

Cleantech Exits: M&As Are Weak, Go IPO - Earth2Tech

Venture capitalists liking clean and green energy startups - SFGate.com

Two Pension Programs Offer Clean-Energy Fund - WSJ

Remember those fresh-from-the-oven whitepapers from The Green Grid we mentioned yesterday?

Today they sent word that two of those publications are now available for public consumption, "Green Grid Data Center Power Efficiency Metrics: PUE and DCiE" and "Qualitative Analysis of Power Distribution Configurations for Data Centers." You can grab those PDFs here.

If you're planning a new data center, or overhauling an existing one, it's definitely worth a look.

Power supplies, storage, servers... They are all getting greener by the minute.

D-Link, however, is turning their attention to networking gear (only natural really) with its Green Ethernet initiative. There are some clever tech tricks involved, but let's allow D-Link to explain:

Power conserved when links are idle

Even when a computer is shut down, switches often remain on and continue to consume considerable amounts of power. Through D-Link's Green Ethernet technology, the new switches can detect when a computer is turned off and will respond accordingly by powering down the corresponding port into standby mode and reducing power used for that port.

Optimized power usage based on dynamic detection of cable length

Normally, switches send full power to Ethernet cables regardless of the actual length of the cable. Through D-Link's Green Ethernet technology, the switches are able to analyze the cable's length and adjust the power accordingly. Since the cable length used by Home/SOHO users is mostly less than 20m, power consumption can be significantly reduced.

Green Ethernet technology makes its debut on the company's SOHO-flavored DGS-2200 series of desktop switches. D-Link will follow them up in November with rackmount switches, DGS-1016D (16-port) and DGS-1024 (24-port). Find more information, including a tip-filled whitepaper, over at the Green Ethernet section of their website.

When you gaze lovingly into your LCD screen, you already know that it's consuming a lot less electricity than those boxy CRTs of old. Heartwarming, ain't it?

Yet, in terms of environmentally-conscious manufacturing, many LCDs could still do a better job.

Lenovo is showing just how much better things can get with the company's new ThinkVision L193p, the first ever monitor to get an EPEAT Gold rating. It also marks the first EPEAT Gold product across all categories to contain over 25 percent post-consumer recycled plastic.

Why is the EPEAT rating such a big deal? Allow me to enlighten you:

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 $299, 19-inch monitor rocks a five millisecond response time, 160 degree horizontal and vertical viewing angle, and HDCP, DVI-D and analog (VGA) ports. It goes on sale in November.

Remember all those milestones that The Green Grid laid out months ago? It turns out that they have been feverishly working to wrap up those whitepapers and today they wrote me to say their Technical Committee has new goodies for Green Grid members:

In the Qualitative Analysis of Power Distribution Configurations for Data Centers, The Green Grid identifies seven high-level configurations for power distribution in the data center. This paper is one of the first to consolidate the advantages and disadvantages of each of these power distribution configurations.

The Existing Data Center Energy Efficiency Metrics white paper is the industry’s first consolidated look at all existing organizations and metrics that are focused on energy efficiency in data centers and related IT equipment. The Green Grid will use this research to determine what areas are currently being addressed and, more importantly, what areas have the greatest need for energy efficiency metrics.

The updated version of the Data Center Efficiency Metrics White Paper refines the metrics first introduced by The Green Grid in February 2007 by more explicitly highlighting infrastructure efficiency. The Green Grid expects the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and Datacenter Efficiency (DCE) metrics to be adopted by the industry and that, moving forward, all data centers will track and report their efficiencies using these metrics.

They also bring news that membership has swelled to 102 organizations and that they have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with The Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) to bolster the environmental and sustainability advocacy efforts of both. The group will also get the benefit of using the labs and testing facilities of APC's new Schneider Electric Technology Center to help further their green IT efforts.

Weren't able to attend Storage Networking World in Dallas? Then you missed out on some sessions dedicated to greening up your storage.

Our colleague Marty Foltyn at Enterprise Storage Forum was able to go and he brought back some tales on how some data centers were able to not only cut power costs, but also some storage management overhead in the process.

Take, for instance this, example:

Security brokerage Morgan Keegan evaluated modular arrays and monolithic storage before selecting a highly virtualized clustered system to reduce environmental loads. Their implementation of dual active data centers as a new virtualized IT platform cut purchased raw capacity by 16TB, provided an 85 percent reduction in storage administration, and reduced to seconds the time needed to provision storage.

Dreamworks Animation opted for greener storage by reusing and recycling disks. Plus:

DreamWorks' strategy incorporated high-density spindles and enclosures and increasing density with compression and de-duplication; single transparent namespaces and NAS arrays for low labor costs.

Keep reading for the full recap.

Frankly, it may be a while before SSDs close the price-per-GB chasm. So it's welcome news that Hitach has lowered the power requirements of its desktop hard drives with the new P7K500 line. The 7,200 RPM units have capacities of 250, 320 and 500 GB. They draw just 3.6 watts for the 250 GB model and 4.8 watts for the 320 and 500 GB ones.

Maximum PC outlines some of the power-saving features:

• The Travelstar system-on-chip design has a new, power-efficient profile.
  
• In the drive's new "unload idle" mode, the drive heads are actually unloaded to the ramp and the drive's servo shuts down (although the platters still chug along at 7,200 RPM), which saves a bit of juice.
  
• In the drive's "low RPM idle" mode, the platters themselves spin down to 4,400 RPM.

Maximum PC will also be getting their hands on a unit soon with a review to follow. Stay tuned...

[via Gizmodo]

Morgan Stanley has seen the future of power generation, and it is green. The banking giant estimates that by 2030, power from clean sources (solar, wind, tides) will become a $1 trillion a year market.

Say it with me, Dr. Evil style: one treeellion dollars. This Reuters report tells us:

"The global risks posed by climate change are driving spending and investment in clean energy solutions, which (unlike the oil shock that spawned the first wave of energy solutions in the 1970s) is durable and accelerating," Morgan Stanley said in the note.

The bank also initiated coverage of the clean energy industry. It rated the following companies as overweight-volatile: thin film solar company First Solar Inc, solar company SunPower Corp, biofuel company VeraSun Energy Corp., and emissions reducers Fuel Tech Inc.

That last paragraph is encouraging and a sign that cleantech companies are being taken seriously in the financial markets. Yet somewhat ironically, if we achieve a laudable and as of yet elusive goal within the next several years, the cleantech revolution may suffer.

The report cautioned that sales could be reduced in the unlikely event that world governments change direction on climate change policy and stop taking steps to monetize greenhouse gas emissions. Peace in the Middle East could also push down oil prices, which could slow growth.

Here’s hoping we don't have to compromise.

Quit IM-ing your BFF and engage in a greener waste of time: hitting the following links!

Dell OptiPlex 755 Lets Buyers Go Green, Save Green - Small Business Computing

Dell's Regeneration Challenge - Dell (Press Release)

Factor sustainability into your SaaS decision - InfoWorld

SNIA forms green coalition - The Register
Related: Storage sector needs to think greener

Gusty Gutsy Gibbon, by the smattering of reports I've seen online, is a big improvement. Plus, it now incorporates new a newer tickless idle kernel for increased energy efficiency. No harm in trying...

Update: Yay for proofreading! Not once, but twice did I write "Gusty Gibbon", which is fine and dandy for built-in spell checkers but not for a seasoned editor like me. So I apologize to the Ubuntu crew for calling their fine OS a gassy little monkey.

Yes, it's been that kind of day...

Will the iPhone ever be without controversy? Let's get caught up in with the latest...

It turns out that Greenpeace dissected an iPhone (a gruesome yet strangely irresistible ritual among a certain class of gadget lover). Long story short, they found chemicals that are banned in Europe and San Francisco (moreso in the earbuds) for health reasons and a battery that's soldered on. Drama ensues, Apple responds and the vicious cycle begins anew.

I can't confirm the veracity of their claims since my testing lab is currently... nonexistent, but yeah, pretty strong claims. The thing is that Apple doesn't deny the presence of those materials, noting that they are well within safety limits. Plus they claim to be on track to completely eliminate the chemicals (PVC and BFRs) by 2008.

Still, Apple may be facing a lawsuit over it thanks to the Center for Environmental Health in Oakland, CA. Doubly irksome is soldered-on battery, making it even tougher for DIYers to wring more life out of their $600 $400 phones.

Now that you're all caught up with this tangled little yarn, let's get to the news that will really set the hearts of Mac devs aflutter. iPhone SDK in February '08!

Update: Datamation IT Management Blog (henceforth DIMB) weighs in with a hilarious 5-point tip sheet for Jobs & Gang. MS Asbestos Phone FTW!

Lifehacker, the personal productivity and "life hacks" site, is spotlighting a nifty little power management utility for Mac OS X called Lights Out from Northern Softworks. Adam Pash describes it as "your Mac's default Energy Saver tool on steroids, allowing users to set very specific energy saving settings."

Here's the features rundown from the developer's site:

• User configurable idle times for dimming the screen, spinning down disks, and CPU sleep.
• Customize Energy Saver settings for individual applications.
• User configurable idle time for logout.
• User configurable idle time for system shut down.
• User definable hot spots for CPU sleep and never sleep.
• Toggle Safe Sleep on and off.
• Delete the sleepimage file.
• Easily switch sleep on and off.
• Application based for easy installation and stability.
• Simple to configure and use.
• Illustrated Documentation.

Though I, like the Lifehacker crew, prefer free, a license costs a mere $8.99, which you'll probably earn back with these energy prices these days.

Copan isn't the only company offering MAID (massive array of idle disks) storage. Now Fujitsu Computer Systems is getting into the game with its ETERNUS2000 SAN gear for small to midsized businesses, or rather, enterprises!

First, a quick refresher.

MAID helps IT shops save a considerable amount on electricity. How? Well, by offloading data that is infrequently accessed to these arrays, where it resides on disks that remain generally unpowered. When called for by a user or an application, the disks spin up though there is a penalty of several seconds until the data is found by the hard drive and eventually delivered to the end user.

Fuji Fujitsu is planning to woo small business by addressing two concerns: cost and energy efficiency. You can't tell by the picture on the right, but it's green on the inside. Onto the press release!

"Fujitsu found that upfront costs, power consumption, high availability and flexibility are the top IT concerns of SMEs that are struggling with tight budgets," said Dave Egan, senior vice president of storage at Fujitsu Computer Systems. "The ETERNUS2000 SAN was designed to meet each of these challenges. The system has a sub-$12K entry price for 2TB of storage, and offers the greenest power design in the industry, a fully redundant design, three-tiered storage options for maximum flexibility, and a standards-based approach to hardware and software that ensures the ETERNUS2000 SAN will continue to function as part of an expanding infrastructure."

Lucky you, if your infrastructure keeps expanding, that is. Guess your budget's not-so-tight then!

The full press release follows...

Update: Fixed the headline to read *Fujitsu* after the education I got in the comments. Though technically, Fuji isn't the blimp company either since they quit operating it as I was so tragically informed during a press event with Fuji Film.

IT departments don’t get the electric bills, and for many businesses, that’s part of the disconnect that’s still hampering the adoption of power-saving technology and processes.

eWeek has an article on how web hosting provider Rackspace has taken data center greening to heart. In it, writer Jeffrey Burt mentions a flooring company, Mohawk Industries, that has linked the facilities and IT departments in a way that will add to its established cost- and energy-saving programs.

In addition, Mohawk is addressing what some analysts and vendors say is a key hurdle to greater energy efficiency in data centers—bridging the gap between the IT folks who order and run the equipment and the facilities employees in charge of powering and cooling the data centers.

"Like most companies, the power and utility charges don't hit an IS cost center, so we don't see the charges," Jensen said. "However, we have recently base-lined both our data centers in the watts and amperage loads they are using at peak/average times. We can then compare this after our changes and monitor as new servers are added."

It’s a good idea to ease into it though. If the IT folks were to just see the bills, they’d likely just keel over taking a lot of precious equipment along for the spill.

By now you've had hours to digest the news that Al Gore and the UN Climate Panel were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. You've undoubtedly had your fill of the political sniping/deifying and now you're wondering what it all means, if anything.

Katie Fehrenbacher of Earth2Tech opines that today's developments are a good thing for the green movement, the technology scene (he's on both the boards of Apple and Google), and the point in which they intersect.

However, the most profound impact will be had on the children, which, don't forget, are our future. Cue sappy 80's song!

But the attention also means more young people are getting excited about studying scientific fields that can help climate change. University professors have seen an uptick in student interest in fields like biofuels, and the next disruptive game-changer for energy will likely come out of the labs of the next generation of scientists. More and more jobs are also being created by greentech, particularly sectors like solar.

Rumored for days, today the Nobel Foundation confirmed that Al Gore, former US Vice President has won the Nobel Peace Prize, an honor he is sharing with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. According to Reuters, he'll be donating his share of the prize money to the Alliance for Climate Protection, described a bipartisan non-profit organization.

It's been a good year for Gore, which saw the documentary film An Inconvenient Truth score a couple of Oscars (best documentary and music) and an Emmy for the Current TV channel which promotes citizen journalism by airing user submitted video content.

Not bad for the guy that geeks knock for claiming to have invented the Internet (a popular belief, but still an urban legend).

More information on the Peace Prize, and winners in other categories, is available at the Nobel Foundation website.

Going green pays off for investors, environment, conferees told - Pensions & Investments

Innovalight raises $28M for new ink-based solar cell - Venture Beat

Gassy Bugs - Forbes

LS9 takes $15M to synthesize petroleum alternative - Venture Beat

New Deloitte Awards Honour Green Technology Leaders - ecolog.com

No more dubious browser games. Pollution is an honest-to-goodness play mechanic in the granddaddy of them all, SimCity.

Or so Electronic Arts and BP say . . .

On the surface, it sounds like a great idea. However, players will find that just like in Chevron's browser game, SimCity Societies -- a SimCity offshoot -- is firmly anchored in a fossil fuel-constrained world due, in part, to a cozy little relationship between EA and BP. You see, BP collaborated with EA to develop the energy production part of the game and paid the game publisher to include its logo, though they did not discuss how much to The New York Times.

Seth Schiesel, writer of the The Times piece doesn't fail to notice how selective BP is with its branding:

One wrinkle in the game’s marketing is that relatively clean systems like wind farms, natural gas plants and solar farms are branded with the BP logo, while the dirty options like coal are not. Gas stations in the game also carry the BP brand.

The game goes on sale in November. This "hopeful" GameSpy preview makes it sound like a pretty big departure from the gameplay SimCity fans are accustomed to.

Alienware, perhaps the most famous of specialty computer makers among gamers, has been offering 64 GB solid state drives (SSD) as an option in its Area-51 m9750 laptop for a month.

Here's the relevant press release snippet:

The Area-51 m9750 is the industry’s first system to offer a dual 64GB SSD RAID 0 configuration and a dual drive configuration combining a 64GB SSD and a 200GB 7,200 RPM hard drive. Users can also opt for a single 64GB SSD configuration.

Currently, adding a single 64 GB SSD adds $1,100 to the price. Two 64 GB SSDs in a RAID 0 configuration cost $2,000 above base for a total of $3,799. And that's without playing with any of the other options.

I'm sure corporate parent Dell is watching the situation closely. Here's hoping that like most tech pioneered by the prosumer and enthusiast market, this too reaches the mainstream soon, albeit at a more palatable price.

[via Slashdot]

...and you can thank (or blame) virtualization.

OK, first, I did not set off to mine InternetNews for all of my posts today. But heck, they make it so easy. Anyway, our friendly neighborhood news bureau has a story that might give server vendors a bout of palpitations/chills/hysterics... take your pick.

In short, virtualization, touted as a great way to boost server utilization and save on energy costs (running more on less hardware, you get the idea), may spell troubling times for the likes of Dell, HP, and IBM.

InternetNews' Andy Patrizio delivers the grim details from Infiniti Research:

The study suggests that sales will slow to two percent in 2008 -- representing a marked decline from the 5.9 percent annual growth rates that fellow market researcher IDC saw in 2006, and the 8.9 percent from a recent Gartner study.

According to Infiniti's numbers, server sales may actually turn negative by 2014 with 24.5 million units deployed, down from the 29 million servers operating in 2006.

But don't fret just yet. Vendors are already offsetting the ding to their per-unit hardware sales by offering pricier servers with multi-core/multi-processor architectures and loading them up with beefier RAM and storage subsystems - exactly the kinds of boxes that virtual machines thrive on.

Read the rest of the article for more perspectives, including those of AMD and Intel.

At Gartner's Symposium ITxpo 2007 in Orlando, analysts for the research firm deemed "Green IT" as one of the areas to keep an eye on in 2008. You're not terribly shocked, I know. Still, it bodes well when a Gartner analyst proclaims it to a standing room only crowd.

David Needle of InternetNews was in attendance and he noted an interesting assertion made by analyst Carl Claunch on the key difference in how American and European firms approach the environmental impact of their IT operations.

...Claunch also discussed another apparent split: this time, between Europe and the U.S. over managing IT's environmental impact. Europe, he said, pays more overall attention to the issue.

By contrast, while plenty of U.S. corporations have "green" initiatives, they've chiefly centered on ways to save energy only in the datacenter.

Not that I doubt what he has to say, but really? Drop a comment if you can offer some insight.

What are the other areas to keep an eye on? These would include virtualization -- which may butcher server sales (ack!) -- unified communications and SaaS.

I've used "green" and "sustainable" pretty interchangeably on this blog without a second thought. It turns out that maybe I should have spent more time pondering the difference between the two terms.

Green tech generally describes energy efficient machines, but I've also seen it attached to devices that generate power using renewable resources (solar, wind...). Needless to say, green is used pretty broadly.

On the other hand, the sustainability movement subscribes a different, yet compatible, philosophy.

Sustainable IT's Ted Samson writes:

Then there's sustainable technology. The idea is to not just haphazardly buy the newest, greenest products out there and stick them in your server rooms and on your desktops in a frantic effort to become green. Rather, it reflects planning and investing in a technology infrastructure that will serve your company's needs today and tomorrow, while helping your company save money on wasted resources such as energy and paper; make the best possible use of existing datacenter space so as to postpone having to build a new one; and reduce its overall environmental impact, which is both socially responsible and potentially advantageous should the government start cracking down on carbon emissions and the like.

So where does clean tech fit in?

Seagate is looking to bridge the gap between traditional hard disks and drives made up entirely of flash memory with hybrid drives that combine the virtues of the two.

The company announced this week that it has begun shipping the Momentus 5400 PSD; PSD stands for Power Savings Drive, clever!

The storage unit is made up of traditional platter-based storage (capacities of 80 GB, 120 GB, 160 GB; 5400 RPM) combined with 256 MB of flash memory. Although it seems a paltry amount at first blush, those extra megabytes help the drive achieve the following, according to a company release:

Faster boot-up -- Once a notebook is turned on, a traditional hard drive's platters must spin up before boot-up can begin. Hybrid hard drives load boot-up files on the flash memory to minimize this delay. Once the drive spins up, computer files are pulled simultaneously from the spinning media and the flash.

Lower power consumption -- Seagate's Momentus 5400 PSD hard drives reduce hard disc drive power draw by up to 50 percent and extends battery life -- especially important in mobile applications -- by reducing platter spin time. In hybrid mode, the hard drive's spindle motors spin down, dramatically reducing the drive’s power requirements.

Greater reliability -- Reducing platter spin time extends drive life by minimizing wear and tear. In hybrid mode, the drive locks its read-write heads in place, enabling the drive to withstand 900 Gs of shock, the rough equivalent of dropping a laptop from a height of six feet to a hard surface.

Higher performance -- Hybrid hard drives also quicken access to laptop data. Windows Vista's ReadyDrive technology uses Vista Superfetch to analyze computer usage patterns -- such as how frequently a worker accesses certain files -- and place commonly accessed user data in the flash memory to shorten system response time.

Looks like the flash memory should help compensate for the pokey 5,400 RPMs. And sorry, there's word on price yet, since Seagate seems to be targeting OEMs with the drive.

You can, however, catch Seagate's VP of Global Marketing, Marc Jourlait, discussing the technology in a video podcast over at PodTech.net (of Scoble fame).

Oh, and thanks Dan!

Update: Andy Patrizio over at InternetNews dashes our hopes of efficient hybrid desktop drives from Seagate. Hit the article for more details.

Mark Thompson, Fairchild Semiconductor's president and CEO, thinks there's more electronics makers can do to curb a data center's growing appetite for electricity, especially in the US. One way is to set limits on devices that are hooked on standby power.

New and innovative worldwide energy standards are required to help solve the problem, but the U.S. is behind the curve, Thompson said. "The U.S. is way, way behind in term of how standards can drive industries," he said.

There are some viable standards — and solutions — to the problem. In 1999, the International Energy Agency (IEA) proposed that all countries harmonize energy policies to reduce standby power, setting the target of 1-Watt per device by 2010.

In essence, he argues, technologies that put less of a strain on the power grid is good for limiting greenhouse gases. But industry has to step up to the plate.

Not that I'm the sky-is-falling type, mind you, but an early October stretch of 80-plus F days in NYC makes one wonder... At this rate, I won't don a sweater until New Years. Hurry up with that green tech, already!

Maybe not as headline-grabbing as Californian e-voting scandals but they're still important! Today's green/cleantech links:

IT execs slam lack of green storage - vnunet.com

Toshiba crams a fuel cell into PMP concept - Engadget

The Top 10 Women in Cleantech - Earth2Tech

Green Power - CNNMoney.com/Business 2.0

PG&E Gives Away 1 Million Energy Efficient Light Bulbs - Green Wombat

With only four months and some change until Valentine's Day, Hank Green of EcoGeek fame imparts some helpful advice on turning your geeky, treehugging charms into lady bait.

Here's his first tip.

Work Up Your Green Cred

Skip the fancy dinner and head to the local wildlife refuge, land trust, or wildlife rehabilitation center...preferably with checkbook in hand. A lot of ladies aren't even impressed by $100 dinners anymore, but she'll be putty in your hands if you bust out a Benjamin for mother earth.

My favorite quote today is GREENEGGSNSAM's comment on this Gizmodo gallery pic. The image is part of a reader rig popularity contest that's currently running on the popular gadget blog (vote today!).

Now, I love technology as much as the next geek, and I sense there's some serious multimedia editing going on in Steve Larson's entry, but... WOW! I will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that much of it is turned off when the digicam isn't around.

There are good reasons for striving for a paperless office in a small business environment, other than avoiding toner lung. These include reduced cost and improved collaboration.

Small Business Computing's James A. Martin delves into the matter and finds that while it's a potentially business-boosting move, years of dead tree inertia -- centuries, really -- may be hard to overcome.

Still, anything that improves the bottom line is sure to motivate...

Reduced costs. “Paper and all the attendant costs associated with it, such as toner and ink, have become a big expense for companies,” said Dunn. Reducing paper can save a small business hundreds per year. Also, a paperless environment means you have less need for physical space to store paper records. In turn, that can help you reduce your total office space footage, delivering significant cost savings.

MajesticInvites.com, an e-commerce invitations design company with eight employees, saves approximately $100,000 each year by being paperless, said Alina Uzilov, the company's president. The business saves money on paper, printing, mailing, physical storage for paper files and other expenses. MajesticInvites.com has eliminated paper from nearly all of its processes, such as design comps, contracts, invoicing and purchase orders.

The cost savings issue is immediately apparent. There's less to spend on paper, printing supplies, filing cabinets, and document storage/shredding services. Improved collaboration is achieved by speeding up the decision making process with electronic correspondence and shared files. The inherent speed and accessibility of these runs circles around paper based workflows.

Plus, you'll spare yourself the indignities of smudged toner, coffee stains and documents that tag along on co-workers' bathroom breaks. And now your diminishing stacks of paper can serve a nobler purpose: handy cat mattress.

Photo: 0823 paper tiger - iowa_spirit_walker/Flickr - Creative Commons

Rackspace surveyed some customers and they found that over half of them wouldn't mind paying from 5 to 10 percent more for greener IT products and services.

InformationWeek has the details.

More than half of its customers are willing to pay 5% to 10% more for green products and green services, according to a survey of about 400 customers by managed hosting specialist Rackspace. The survey also found that 55% are taking green steps within their operations, and 21% said they chose green vendors and products when possible. The survey found that 14% of respondents believe use of green vendors is a central component of their corporate strategy, and 59% said green vendors are important.

Is that the sound of Rackspace "adjusting" their pricing plans? Not necessarily.

The company has more than a few data centers littering the globe, including one in eco-conscious Europe (London, specifically), so energy savings is not a new concept to the managed hosting provider. And in addition to being a member of The Green Grid, they've dabbled in some outreach of their own.

Still, this news bodes well for businesses that offer eco-friendly IT services.

Delighting in piles of green from record sales of its Wii game machine and DS handheld, Nintendo is now advocating a different kind of green with a new game for the kids (and kids at heart).

Chibi-Robo: Park Patrol for the Nintendo DS lets kids control a cute little robot that plants and waters flowers, rebuilds park equipment (?!) and combats Smoglings. Sadly, with no turtle-stomping Italian plumbers or galactic bounty hunters in sight, the game sounds a bit trite.

But the kids may dig it, and the game's message may take root in their developing brains. And considering they’re interacting with a plastic slab for hours at a time, it could help to restore some cosmic balance. Plus, they'll be picking 500 people that register with the Chibi Robo site to receive a seedling that they can plant.

More interesting to me, though, is Nintendo's own sustainability efforts, which they helpfully summed up in the press release.

According to Nintendo, the company:

• recycles the paper it uses company-wide, limits the use of colored paper (since it's not easily recycled) and purchases recycled paper towels, report covers, message pads and writing pads.
• recycles more than 70 percent of the waste generated at its headquarters and promotes the recycling of aluminum cans and glass in its corporate cafeterias. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the United States as a whole recycles about 32 percent of its waste.
• requires manufacturers not use any banned substances (such as lead, mercury, etc.) in components, nor use them in the manufacturing process for any components used in its products.

The last one is particularly worthy of attention since they are currently responsible for some of the best-selling consumer electronic devices. And while video games are hardly a green activity (require power, consume tons of plastic, butt imprints on mom's couch...), every little bit counts.

Have an old laptop that's passed its prime and just taking up space? EcoGeek has some tips -- on video no less -- on how to recycle it responsibly and for profit.

If you're handy with a few tools (and what geek isn't?), you can disassemble the unit and earn a nice chunk of change by auctioning off the components on eBay.

Piqued your interest yet?

See how he does it by hitting his post or watching the embedded YouTube video after the jump.