Green Computing

Green Computing is the study and practice of using computing resources efficiently.

Electronics Recycling

Electronic Waste (eWaste)

  • Reduce your generation of e-waste through preventive maintenance we offer.
  • Reuse functioning electronic equipment by donating it.
  • Recycle those components that can't be repaired.

Recycling your non-working computers, monitors, printers, and batteries is a responsibility of everyone in the community to ensure the toxic hazardous waste within them does not get put in our landfills.  By recycling, these toxic materials like lead, don't leak into our water supply.  In addition to this, the precious metals like gold, silver, and copper and other materials are extracted, melted, and reprocessed to be reused again.

California Integrated Waste Management Board - http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/Electronics

Department of Toxic Substances Control - http://www.dtsc.ca.gov

Computer Virtualization (hardware, software, operating system, storage, and network)

Virtualization in its general definition is the process of emulating hardware through software.  The benefits of using virtualization are numerous, but here are just a few:

  • Management - eases administration and support of IT infrastructure, which reduces costs
  • Power Reduction - running numerous virtual machines within fewer physical machines by 5 to 1 reduces electricity costs
  • Deployment - eases setup, backup, business continuity and disaster recovery
  • Availability - reduces the number of hardware points of failure, which increases reliability
  • Isolation - limits security exposure and risks, which reduces vulnerabilities
  • Flexibility - allows for complete cross-platform configuration and compatibility
  • Compliance - eases compliance with the numerous city, state, federal, and international laws and regulations
First implemented on the IBM System/370, hardware-assisted virtualization is a virtualization approach that enables efficient full virtualization using help from hardware capabilities, primarily from the host processors. Full virtualization is used to simulate a complete hardware environment, or virtual machine, in which an unmodified guest operating system (using the same instruction set as the host machine) executes in complete isolation. Hardware-assisted virtualization was recently (2006) added to x86 processors (Intel VT or AMD-V).

Power Management


One question that comes up quite often is should you leave your computer on or off? Before you can answer this question you need to know how the computer is being used. If the computer serves a mission-critical service it must remain on at all times. If the computer is a standalone or non-mission-critical machine, then the next question is how often do you use it. Once these questions have been answered, then and only then can you answer the question on whether leaving it on or off is best.

Computers are very similar to humans in that they have subsystems that work individually and together with other subsystems. These subsystems like video and audio for example can be turned off, disabled, or used when needed. The problem with this is the reduction of convenience in maintaining these. One way to control these subsystems is through power management features through standards such as ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) that can power down specific components or an entire computer when not used. This leads to the last issue of power cycling, chip creep, and environmental issues that happen when a system is turned on and off frequently. When a system is cold and is powered on, the fluctuation of heat and cold causes components to contract and expand, which when done very often causes them to crack or break away from the card or motherboard they are connected to. If you use your computer daily, leaving it on is always better then turning it off and on daily, because not only does it save wear and tear on the components, the power management features can put these devices in sleep or standby mode, which reduces power consumption by maintaining a low voltage to specific required components (motherboard, CPU, memory), which increases the life cycle or lifetime usage. These power management modes of operation are many, but the most basic states are as follows:

1. Standby/Sleep
2. Hibernate

Standby/Sleep Mode:

This mode or state of operation powers down everything but the motherboard, CPU, and memory depending on your requirements. The benefits to this is you save energy compared to being fully powered and you can use your computer quickly by waking it up using your mouse or keyboard.

Hibernate Mode:

This mode or state of operation saves everything currently stored in memory (RAM) to a file on your hard drive. The benefit of this is that when you return to your computer for use, the hibernation file that was saved is used and allows you to return to exactly where you left off prior to hibernating. The only cost of this is the time it takes to power on your computer and return to where you originally hibernated from.

In order for all this to work, your computer’s BIOS, operating system, and hardware must have the capability to use these power management modes. The good news is that almost every system today is able to use this technology because of government “Green” standards and requirements.

I encourage you to use these power management features in your systems. You will be pleasantly surprised how much money you can save by using this technology and also reduces the load stress of our nation’s power plants.

If you would like to learn more about power management, contact us for consultation or service. 

Extend the Battery Life of a Notebook, Laptop, Netbook, and Personal Digital Assistant

  • Use a cooling pad and proper ventilation to prevent overheating which increases fan usage and decreases performance when CPU "throttles" to a slower speed.
  • Purchase a low-power CPU device that decreases power consumption but at the cost of a reduction in performance.
  • Purchase a smaller screen or form factor device that will requires less power to operate.
  • Eject any optical media from their drives that may spin automatically when media is detected.
  • Remove any external device or peripheral that is not currently in use.
  • Reduce the screen brightness of the device.
  • Purchase a better battery with more cells or better technology like a fuel cell battery.
  • Adjust "Power Options" in Windows or use other power management features of the device.
  • Use solid state drives instead of hard drives, which use less power.
  • Turn off or disable any devices like WiFi, Bluetooth, IrDA, modem, network card, and any other internal/external cards.
  • Reduce background processes, services, or daemons that are not needed.
  • Use "hibernate mode" instead of "standby/sleep mode" when away for an extended period of time away from the device.
  • Single-task instead of multitasking when using programs or applications, which reduces CPU usage.

Resources

Computer Industry

Additional Resources


Government Agencies: