RSSEcoFocus: PCs and software meet bikes, paint, and other green goods
By Jacqueline Emigh | Published May 1, 2009, 1:17 PM
At Pepcom's EcoFocus press event this week, HP launched new notebooks featuring HP Smart AC Adapters for automatically making power adjustments when needed. Available preloaded with a choice of Microsoft Windows or Novell SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11, the five new HP ProBook models also come with HP Mobile Broadband, a system combining an HP m2400 module with built-in Qualcomm Gobi technology to support wireless connectivity to multiple broadband networks and operators.
Priced starting at about $529, the ProBooks come in 14-, 15.6-, and 17.-3-inch widescreen flavors. All five ProBooks are also outfitted with a new keyboard design, in which the keys are raised in an attempt to prevent dust and dirt from settling underneath. The notebooks offer a mercury-free design and high-definition backlit displays. A compatible USB 2.0 docking station is slated to ship in June, Betanews was told.
Meanwhile, Lenovo highlighted its ThinkCentre M58e all-in-one desktop PC system, now shipping for the past couple of weeks. The all-in-one incorporates Lenovo Power Manager, a power management tool for reducing the PC's carbon footprint, noted Lenovo's Aimee Foskie, during a product demo.
Like HP and Lenovo, PC makers like Sony and Toshiba also showed off full line-ups of previously announced computers -- along with accessories such as displays and printers -- touted as compliant with specifications such as Energy Star and EPEAT. Even the netbooks were eco-friendly.
Also at EcoFocus, a first-time "green" show from Pepcom, Monster released two new Digital PowerCenters for home theater systems. Monster's HDP 850G (priced at $99.95) and HDP 900G ($129.95), each equipped with Monster GreenPower technology for shutting off home theater components when not in use.
A start-up named MakeMeSustainable introduced a Web-based software system, now in beta, aimed at letting consumers and companies calculate and track their own carbon footprints, get suggestions for cutting their energy costs, and share energy-related information online with friends and business partners.
But the PCs and software on hand at EcoFocus dotted a landscape also made up of a wide assortment of other "green" ware, including anti-pollution paints from Benjamin Moore and Pratt & Lambert; recycled paper goods from Marcal and Mohawk; PiSAT's "green" solar lantern/flashlight; Mariah Power's windspire vertical axis wind turbine; an electronic bike from Ultra Motors USA, and an alternative air conditioning system from CALMAC.
Unlike Schwinn's previously released Tailwind hybrid bike, Ultra Motors' A2B requires no peddling when its removable lithium ion battery is in use, said a company rep. If the A2B's battery power does run out, you can always peddle the vehicle like a regular bike. That scenario does seem kind of unlikely, though, since Ultra Motors also provides a built-in "realtime state-of-charge indicator."
For their part, CALMAC's IceBank Energy Storage Systems store energy from relatively cheap sources such as wind power and off-peak electricity overnight, in the form of ice. The ice is then used the next day to cool buildings like retail stores, schools, banks, and office buildings.
Oh wonderful.
A bike that you actually power yourself and receive the benefit of exercise is insufficient - we need a 'green' 'do it for you ' device!
What BS.
...And poison ivy is organic and natural. I don't want that in my salad either.
Just more idiotic symbolism over substance illustrating more of the fundamental problem - only now it masquerades as intelligence and progress and is promoted on BN as if it is significant.
What? No $100 flashlights or radios designed for impoverished 3rd world countries announced this week?
And using energy to make ice to cool buildings. Where do they find these idiots?
Yup, no sense in designing buildings to take advantage of passive convective cooling, or of using geothermal heatpumps utilizing the ground temperature to cool the buildings! Nope! That would ccome dangerously close to being an efficient use of energy!
Let's use more efficient sources of energy to generate lower efficiency means to do less! But how novel! And oh so trendy.
This designer green crap is just more of the crap we should have been avoiding all along as we have sought novel ways to avoid doing what we could have done ourselves all along ( nope, turning off a switch is far too complicated! We need complex control systems!) or designing incredibly inefficient methods to avoid doing what we would normally do in the process of walking or pedaling a bicycle.
And we need more gadgets that use resources to track our carbon footprint instead of simply being aware on a common sense level and walking or pedaling or turning off light switches or not buying nonsensical gadgets to do what we can already do if we are simply aware of our behavior and surroundings. In other words, these neat gadgets let us function in our everyday oblivious mode as we feel good about ourselves for buying yet one more piece of sh!t gadget designed to make us FEEL better - sort of what these dweebs' vote for Obama was. THEY will do it for us! Weeeeeeeeeeeee.......
The same idiots who learn that the Amazon is being destroyed and that tigers are endangered and have their kids waste all sorts of resources at school making posters expressing their emotional desire to save these resources and who then go home and see a snake in their backyard and kill it or use such soil sterilizers as Amdro to sterilize their yards of all bugs - and then have it run off into the sewers and drains and creeks...
Yup, symbolism over substance.
Pardon me, I need to go buy a pedometer so that I will lose weight - instead of simply exercising and employing portion control...but that assumes that I assume control of my actions! Like that will ever happen!
Well, at least it keeps some of these idiots busy designing such nonsense off the streets.
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