Tulip, the only 'green' PC-maker, has come out with a new IDeal System made from recyclable products.
Last year, the company made a thorough investigation of a desktop PC's features that most impact the environment. The study analysed the entire product chain from extracting raw materials, through production and use of the product, to its disposal.
Using EDO indicators, which represent the degree of harm to the environment and health by taking into account the greenhouse effect, damage to the ozone layer, acidification and emission, the study found 90 per cent of environmental impact comes from actual use.
The new IDeal workstation takes into account these findings and reduces power consumption by 27 per cent and the ECO indicator by 26 per cent. Constructed entirely from recyclable materials, the ID model has a choice of Pentium processors, hot-pluggable PCMCIA cards, on-board Ethernet controller and in infrared link for simple, wireless communications. It also has one of the smallest footprints and no fan, making for a more comfortable and quiet work space.
The ID model also can be equipped with communications capabilities such as fax, modem, e-mail, voice mail, video-conferencing and answering machine, and remain switched on without consuming a lot of power. Keeping the PC on, however, poses security problems, so Tulip created the ECO-button.
The user interface for locking and unlocking the system or forcing the system into a power management mode is independent of the operating system. A user simply activates the ECO-button which combines with system management interrupt routines to switch to power management and energy saving mode.
