CES 2008: HP Pulls the Plug, Announces 25% Less Power Usage Until 2010

Hewlett Packard announced that it will dramatically reduce the energy requirements for its future computers by up to 25 percent. The HP promise will become reality within two years, as part of the company's involvement in preserving a clean environment.

In order to achieve its goal, Hewlett-Packard will reconsider its choices of necessary hardware. HP will only use more efficient power supplies and lower-energy chipsets inside their PC systems, along with other hardware components and peripherals. The company has announced that these changes are aiming at its entire PC line, including servers, desktop and portable systems.

Hewlett-Packard is the undisputed market leader when it comes to the number of Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT). Currently, the company ships more than 24 system configurations that are registered as either Gold or Silver in the energy efficiency top.

"HP, for decades, has been integrating environmentally responsible components and processes across the entire product lifecycle," said Todd Bradley, an executive vice president at HP, in a statement. "We are dedicated to meeting our energy consumption goal of 25% reduction by 2010, and these additional EPEAT-Gold registrations exemplify how HP leads the IT market in reducing the environmental impact of its products and business processes."

The EPEAT system helps potential buyers in evaluating the consumer electronics based on the products' environmental attributes. HP was also the first company to manufacture and register an EPEAT Gold product, namely the Compaq rp5700 Long Lifecycle Business Desktop PC.

Hewlett-Packard is continuously improving its series of computers. Last March, the company re-designed three of its HP Compaq computer models (the dc5700, the dc5750 and dc7700) to comply with the EPA's new Energy Star standard.

These updates not only that are environmental-aware, but they also help businesses cut their electricity bills down, as HP computers go into the sleep or idle modes. At the same time, the built-in power supplies feature an increased efficiency of 80 percent, as compared to the average, 65-to-75 percent efficiency power supplies.