Previous page: HP's promise to reduce energy consumption
Q: What about the impact of the energy settings on HP shipped products?
JG: We have a competitor that's touting they have this goal to enable the energy saving features on all PCs they shipped to their customers. And I kind of scratched my head [when I heard that] because we've been doing this for over five years now.
So, for every 12 PCs that have energy saving features enabled when they ship, it is equivalent to taking a car off the road for a year in terms of CO2 reduction. We started looking at this years ago and said - "you know, back in the early days, some of the operating systems weren't real stable, if the computer went to sleep mode, it crashed half the time coming back out" - and as we worked with Microsoft to fix that, what we started doing was just shipping our PCs and notebooks to our customers with the energy saving features turned on.
To these the impact, we did it internally first to HP and we had a 158,000 guinea pigs, which make up our employee base. The next day, we only had like 12 calls saying - "what did you do to my PC while I wasn't here" - so we figured that was basically zero impact.
For the average consumer price customer or the average enterprise customer, they don't change those settings, and so, for every 12 that leave them on we get the environmental benefit of taking a car off the road.
Q: What impact has HP's video collaboration tool, Halo, had on the greening movement?
JG: In one HP department alone - our imaging and printing group - Halo reduced our trips by execs and employees by 25 per cent. We're now populating Halo studios all over HP. We have large customers around the globe, Dreamworks, Pepsi-Cola, etc. These companies now do their business in some cases exclusively [with Halo].
When we talk about energy efficiency, we start with energy efficiency of our products. We move to figuring out how we help our customers make their whole process more energy efficient. And then, the third element is, how do we change the way society thinks about collaboration, and Halo is our first proof point here.
We now have people coming to us saying, "would you consider putting Halo studios in all the major cities around the world and charging on the per hour basis?" So, HP is working with a variety of customers to see if that can be a feasible business model to do.
Related content:
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Green IT products: Five that can save you money
Green computing: tips, tricks and energy cost-cutters
Climate for change: Ten ways to greener highways
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