Microsoft pushes Windows Vista as energy saver

Posted on Saturday, March 08 2008 @ 12:05 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Steve Ballmer announced Microsoft will make its energy-saving strategies public in the hope that data centre admins will be able to learn from them:
Those tips will covers issues such as how to pick a good site for a data centre, how to deal with heat and manage power consumption, Ballmer said during a keynote presentation at the Cebit trade show in Hanover, Germany.

The move is in response to growing concern over the release of carbon dioxide, one of the by products of burning fossil fuels to create electricity. In addition, power demands are ever-increasing, Ballmer said.

"If you look at non-travel power consumption in the world today ... information technology is one of the most rapidly growing power consumers on the planet," Ballmer said. "We think we have a real responsibility ... to reduce power consumption by the IT industry."

Ballmer said the company has for the last decade studied how to engineer its products to consume less power. He cited significant power use reductions in several products.

Windows Vista, the company's latest operating system, consumes 3 watts per hour when running in idle mode, compared to 100 watts per hour for Windows XP. In some configurations, Microsoft's Windows Server 2008, the company's next-generation server launched last week, uses 40 percent less power than Windows Server 2003, Ballmer said.

Microsoft also continues to develop its virtualisation technology, Ballmer said. Virtualisation software enables one piece of hardware to run multiple operating systems, which decreases the need for more physical servers.
More info at TechWorld.


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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