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Dell goes Energy Star 5.0, unveils energy saving calculator

Tony Chan | July 30, 2009 | 0 Comments

Dell has unveiled what it calls the broadest line of US EPA Energy Star 5.0-compliant desktops, workstations and portables. According to the company, select configurations of Dell OptiPlex, Dell Precision and Latitude are now Energy Star 5.0 compliant.

Almost all of the desktops, workstation and portable products designed by the company today consume less than five watts in a low-power mode, which actually exceeds levels currently set by the EPA for energy efficiency, Dell said.

“We are driving energy efficiency across all of our hardware platforms and our compliance with Energy Star 5.0 is just another illustration of how we strive to lead the industry,” says Todd Forsythe, vice president of business client product marketing for Dell. “Our vision is to optimise energy efficiency through the enterprise – from servers and blades to end-point client devices.”

As part the announcement, Dell revealed a new thin-client/virtualised PC computing model it calls, ‘flexible computing’ – where data or computing power are centrally stored and access to data is accessed from multiple client devices. The model “aims to address the needs of both end users and IT by using client-server (network based) computing and virtualization technologies to improve manageability, data security, compliance and disaster recovery.”

ENERGY CALCULATOR
Dell also unveiled its own versions of an energy calculator. But instead of calculating entire systems, Dell’s Client Energy Savings Calculator allows users to see energy consumption levels the component level, including the type of processor, the amount to disk storage, graphics card, memory capacity and even the power management setting. Another unique feature is that the Calculator enables users to analyze power consumption in different countries and regions because it supports user-entry for the price/cost of energy.

The calculator only works for Dell OptiPlex, Vostro and Latitude systems. Users however can determined the energy profile for their system before they put in their order to Dell. OptiPlex customers get further support through an option to have their energy management settings set at the factory instead of configuring each system later.

According to Dell, its OptiPlex 960 enables up to 43% less power consumption than the previous generation of OptiPlex desktops, comes in packaging that is up to 89% recyclable and contains at least 10% post-consumer recycled plastic on the small form factor model.