Thin clients greener than PCs, says vendor - but by how much?

by Stephen Withers

Monday, 21 May 2007

Thin client vendor Neoware claims its thin clients use substantially less electricity than conventional PCs and have other environmental benefits. But do its figures stack up?

The company says replacing 35,000 PCs with Neoware 390 thin clients could result in an electricity saving of up to $US1.9 million per year.

The trouble is that this analysis assumes that PCs consume 280 watts. While that might be true for older desktops and performance-hungry gaming systems, modern mainstream desktops are more likely to be in the 100-150W range. Just because a Dell Optiplex 740 (the system Neoware used for comparison purposes) has a 280W power supply, that doesn't mean it consumes 280W.

While Neoware's thin clients do use even less - 24 to 48W, according to the company's figures - the calculations make no allowance for the power consumed by the servers needed to drive them, or the cooling needed for the data centre. I've never come across a data centre that isn't air-conditioned, but there are plenty of offices that aren't.

You'd also need to ask how many organisations have a fleet of 35,000 desktop PCs.

Other environmental savings are said to come from reduced transportation costs due to the lighter weight, and 50 percent longer life.

Klaus Besier, president and CEO of Neoware, has a point when he says "Without moving parts, such as a fan or disk drive, Neoware's thin clients help companies meet their sustainability targets by eliminating much of the overhead associated with computing," but the power consumption claims do seem to be on the optimistic side.{moscomment}

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