Words From Dell

Matt James over at ecoGeek has a nice interview with Sean Donahue, spokeman for Dell, on their environmental program. There is some same old, same old here - Dell's Plant a Tree for Me program has been covered extensively - and there a quite a few 'forward looking statements' such as plans to integrate with EnergyStar 4 and moving towards 80 Plus power supplies. Ok, we're all doing that.

But there also some fresh ideas. Dell is starting to offer GNU/Linux on factory installs, which will help reduce obsolescence, and there are also some specific recommendations for the most efficient systems that Dell has to offer. These come mainly from the Optiplex and PowerEdge lines. Also, virtualization, a big resource saver, also figures in prominently to their program. Matt remained undecided on their program at the end and fell back to the 'if you don't need it, don't buy it' argument. Barring something truly groundbreaking from a hardware vendor such as, say, six year warranties on all new machines, we will probably be in a holding pattern for some time to come. It's bar raising time.