Waiting for Green Technologies

Opinion: Customer demand can pressure vendors to implement green technologies.

As someone who tracks lots of new and exciting technologies, one of the more interesting areas is in green technologies. On a regular basis I receive studies, releases and sometimes even demos of new products, techniques and technologies that will reduce power usage, cut down on waste and improve the efficiency of computing resources.

And its all really great stuff. Fuel cell technologies that can run everything from a cell phone to an entire server room. Displays that work well using just a trickle of electricity. New power sources that make it possible to take technology to the most remote areas.

Yep, this is all really exciting stuff. I just cant wait until all of these, and many other advancements, find their way into the technologies that I use, and that many businesses use, on a daily basis.

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But unfortunately waiting is exactly what I and every one else is doing. In fact some of these "new" green technologies arent even all that new. Some have been in the works for many years now but have somehow still not made their way into the most recent computing systems.

Sure new technologies can be unpredictable and no advancement is preferable to not ready for prime time implementations, especially in some of the possible uses of fuel cells.

But there has to be some kind of happy medium between a no holds barred risky rush to deploy new technologies and our current glacial pace of green technology advancements.

Look behind the many breathless pronouncements of "green" computers and other technologies that you see today and what you often find is a system that is at best just a few percentage points more efficient than systems from a few years ago.

So whats going on here? Are green technologies too difficult or impractical for technology vendors to deploy today? Some would probably say yes but there is evidence to the contrary.

Click here to read the entire column Waiting for Green Tech.

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