Wanted: one million Australians

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 05 June 2008 10:24

Your IT - Home IT

Presumably because it delivers savings at practically no cost. Ensuring computers are switched off over the weekend and set to automatically sleep when idle delivers worthwhile savings with no investment other than changing people's habits.

De Petro suggests notebook systems are now so common that people are used to power management to conserve battery life, and so the issue is now about educating "the big end of town" to use it on desktop systems.

EDS representative Sundeep Khistry says his company manages three million desktops (probably the world's biggest fleet) with between 80,000 and 90,000 of them in Australia. Policy, programs and people need to work together he says, because "every drop counts".

He suggests tailoring power settings to suit different functions. Revenue generating users may need their computers to remain ready for use throughout the working day, while back-office employees may be able to work satisfactorily with computers that go into sleep mode with a relatively short delay.

Another possibility is that some users could be moved from desktops to notebooks, with a corresponding power saving.

But whatever method you think will work in your home or business, "It's time to stop talking about it and start doing something about it," says Intel's Sean Casey.