What the Other Guy is Washing

This is my ongoing saga on what vendors are doing to promote green computing - survey says that most new IT technology is adopted only after the competition does. This week I'm going to focus on the fringe element, improvements that are improvements but are also heavily advertised.

Epson - changes their packaging from white cardboard to 100% brown cardboard. Also, the plastic used in their cartridges will go from gray to a natural color. Hoo-ray. Is there an award for taking the smallest green step possible?

AMD - Keeps going with their sustainable ad campaign. A+ for raising awareness.

Virtual Iron - will let you try out its virtualization product on a single four-socket server for free. After that, it's $499 per socket. Still a little cheaper than VMWare.

Microsoft - claims that Vista Aero doesn't impact performance. Great, but the OS itself sucks up more energy that that ball in Times Square.