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Green

Building a Green Windows Home Server

Posted By: Sarah Perez | Apr 22nd @ 1:57 PM
I've been following a very interesting series of posts over on the Home Server Hacks blog. They detailing, step-by-step, the process of building a $400 "green" Home Server. The server is encased in a Shuttle KPC housing, which is, according to the Shuttle web site, a low power consumption appliance, using only 55 Watts when in use and 33 Watts when idle. To go even greener, you can use Western Digital Caviar GP series drives. There are five parts to this post about building the green WHS and you can began reading the series here. It's a great idea, and just in time for Earth Day, too!
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An Inconvenient Ride

Posted By: Laura Foy | Mar 28th @ 11:07 AM
Earth Day is almost upon us and it's time to ramp up our Green efforts. Microsoft is no exception to that rule- and as such the Live Search team has decided to sponsor An Inconvenient Ride.  This is a 23 day long bicyicle journey across the country in order to spread the message about the state of our environment and help alert people as to how they can help. And the kicker is- the bicyclists are all kids! It really is an amazing program- I spoke with the Seattle team (who take off this Sunday March 30) about their mission and found it inspiring to see how much these kids really care. Watch this clip and then get involved!

Watch this clip for more info about helping the environment.
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How Green is your PC?

Posted By: Larry Larsen | Feb 14th @ 6:17 PM
Many of us at Microsoft are always looking for tips and ways to cut our power consumption without sacrificing the always-on computer. Our own Steve Cellini is probably the most faithful, choosing every component of his Windows Home Server to be as low power as possible ("Did you know you can get low power consumption hard drives?" No, Steve, I didn't.)

Our friends over at Edge look into how to tell how much power your computer uses and how to get your machine to go faster while using less power. Very interesting to watch and good to know if you're building PCs, check it out here.
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Green Printing

Posted By: Sarah Perez | Feb 7th @ 1:04 AM
There's a new free edition of the popular GreenPrint software, called GreenPrint World Edition. The software, aimed at home users and non-profits, is designed to combat printing waste. The way the software works is by analyzing each page sent to a printer for extraneous content like banner ads, legal jargon, footnotes, or other unnecessary pages. These sections are highlighted in red for you to see before printing. If you want to print a page or section that has been detected as unnecessary, just double-click on it to include it in the document. You can also double-click on areas that are un-highlighted to prevent them from printing. According to the company, using GreenPrint can save you $90 per year and 1400 wasted pages. The software can also be used to create PDFs and it does reporting on the toner and paper savings you've accumulated by using it. GreenPrint World Edition is free by being ad-supported; to turn off the ads, you can upgrade to Home Premium Edition or for business use, there's an Enterprise Edition available. (via downloadsquad)
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Solar powered charging bags, what will they think of next?

Posted By: Laura Foy | Jan 22nd @ 10:33 AM
Have you ever been sitting the park on a beautiful afternoon and thought to yourself, "Gosh, this is perfect but what would really make today complete is if I could spend all afternoon here in the sun AND be on my laptop the entire time." Of COURSE you have! And now you can. Not only do these bags come with solar LED panels that fuel up the batteries inside- to charge your every accessory, but they're stylish accessories as well.
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Green Power-Saving Technology

Posted By: Sarah Perez | Dec 20th, 2007 @ 10:53 AM
Green plug is a company whose goal is to reduce energy and material waste from consumer electronics products and battery powered equipment. To this end, green plug sells embeddable power supply technology to manufacturers. Today's devices like laptops, printers, cameras, etc. require power converters that convert 90V and 254V wall power to device-specific DC power. The unique adapters and converters are expensive to make and waste energy, not to mention lead to a heavy load of assorted cables when you want to take your devices on the go with you. With the green plug technology, instead of unique adapters for every device, power requirements are read from the plugged-in device and the uniform cables and connectors deliver just the power that device needs, no more, no less. Green plug encourages device manufacturers to adopt its free-to-license universal connector and green talkTM protocol for electronic devices and start building devices that use a common connector. I encourage the manufacturers to do this too! Imagine a day when devices all used a common, power-efficient cable or cord! The first environmentally-friendly DC power hub will make its debut at CES 2008. I can't wait to see this!
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Green Awnings powering both your home and your plants

Posted By: Laura Foy | Nov 9th, 2007 @ 1:30 PM
The environmental health clinic at NYU approaches health from an environmental point of view. That being said, we all know it is necessary for plant growth in order for humans to live. In this clip you will see how the health clinic has created Solar Cells, on something they call the Green Awning, that produce power in the form of LED lights that can power your home and feed your plants all at the same time.
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Microsoft Data Centers - getting bigger and better

Posted By: Tina Wood | May 31st, 2007 @ 10:36 AM
I sit down with Michael Manos the senior director of Data Center Services here at Microsoft.  Microsoft is building some massive facilities in various places around the world.  It houses everything from Live to Hotmail.  Can you imagine a building 1.3 miles big?  And its full of thousands and thousands of servers.  He talks about effeciency for environmental reasons and how Microsoft is going green. 
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Green Wi-Fi

Posted By: Tina Wood | Mar 8th, 2007 @ 5:35 PM
Bruce Baikie the co-founder and CEO of Green Wi-Fi stopped by to show us how he brings economically sound Wi-Fi to countries in need.  When Bruce starting investigating computing overseas he saw the biggest issue was a lack of power.  With a power engineering background he developed an intelligent charge control and router that uses solar power.  It's a great mission. 
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