Recently, Sun, IBM, and some of our other competitors have been throwing around a lot of "FUD" (fear, uncertainty, & doubt) about how much electricity Windows Vista supposedly uses. One of their claims even goes so far as to say that Windows Vista computers requires a whopping 300W of power in an attempt to encourage people to build nothing but thin or web-based applications using their own software development frameworks.
Meanwhile, Infotech Reseaerch Group recently did a green computing research study around what impact Windows Vista has on power consumption and results were quite contrary to our competitor’s claims. We had nothing to do with the study mind you and it’s completely independent.
Here are some of the conclusions that they drew, in summary:
- Windows Vista can reduce electricity costs. Businesses can save up to $11 per system, per year by switching to Windows Vista, due to the default power management settings. For a company with 5000 users, this means up to $47,000 of bottom line dollars can be saved annually.
- The Vista Sleep state is more reliable than XP. Computers resume from Sleep in two seconds, which is about the same time it takes a screen to resume from Idle mode in Windows XP.
- Power consumption reduction translates into direct CO2 savings. Carbon dioxide emissions are reduced by up to 67 kg of carbon dioxide per desktop PC, per year. For a company with 5000 users, this is 288 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions reduced.
- Aero graphics have no effect on overall power consumption. Organizations should take advantage of Aero since it does not have a significant impact on electricity usage.
Here is a link to where you can find the study:
Kurt Shintaku's Blog 