14 DAY TRIAL // The IT industry has been hit by a new obsession: environmental-friendly products. Every major hardware manufacturer has to design their components in such a way for everyone to see how they love old fellow Earth. Although there are no standard eco-friendly specifications, worldwide manufacturers outline their ecological passion.
Apart from Quimonda's attempt at diminishing RAM power while keeping a high performance standard, Western Digital joined the eco-club with their GreenPower drive series.
The hard drive manufacturer aims even higher and has transcended the consumer market in search for true green gold: the corporate and enterprise sectors. Their GreenPower drive series, RE2-GP has been launched in 500GB, 750GB, and 1TB sizes, mostly suitable for data centers and promise up to $10,000 in yearly electricity savings. So, time has come to ask: is their offer real, or the green flag they are shaking is nothing but a well-thought marketing strategy?
Western Digital boast their green line and claim a 40 percent efficiency in power consumption as compared to their competitors - the result of their patented IntelliPower, IntelliPark and IntelliSeek technologies. A recent report from objective third-parties have revealed that the disk lives up to its specifications, with a power cut of almost 5 watts, while keeping normal working parameters at a normal threshold.
Finally, it's all about the money. If the drive sells good, there will be other players to join the new eco-friendly trend and will ultimately lead to a biting competition resulting in more and more power-efficient hardware. The power factor will decide mostly upon the notebook sector, as efficient hardware will boost performance.
Performance is limited to the nowadays hardware and any changes could practically revolutionize the industry. Although at this point the ecological factor is just a trendy approach to computers, we can but wonder how notebooks would evolve in the following years.