

Ford saves over $1 million by shutting down computers - MikeCapone
http://media.ford.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=32248

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white_eskimo
Just one of the many examples that highlights the market for energy-
proportional computing. Check out
<http://www.cra.org/ccc/docs/ieee_computer07.pdf>. Machines today still
consume around 50 percent of total peak power while sitting at idle!

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bmalicoat
Interesting they specifically mention being able to save Office documents
automatically. It'd be really nice if all programs implemented a method for
the OS to call 5 or 10 minutes prior to shut-down to let even heavy duty apps
save all their data too.

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mbreese
Why do they even shut down the computer? Why can't they force it to hibernate,
thereby eliminating the need to automatically save documents?

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mjhnghfh
Because the consultant charged $2M for that advice. In most corporates you
leave the machine on because everytime you boot it spends 10mins connecting to
various corporate fileshares, 10mins syncing profiles, 10mins downloading
updates etc. And you can't set it to hibernate/sleep because you don't have
admin rights.

If you are feeling really green you turn off the monitor.

If companies really cared about the environment they would question why they
needed 100,000s of people to drive to a downtown office block to sit in front
of computers doing the electronic equivalent of pushing forms around the
company.

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thwarted
_10mins syncing profiles, 10mins downloading updates_

If you never reboot on Windows, these things never happen, and all the
automated copy-to-the-server backups, profile syncing and updates are for
naught.

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eru
Interesting how the incentives play out.

(DVCS show similar things in reverse---by making merges much cheaper, they
change the workflow, too.)

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DanielStraight
Isn't $1 million to Ford basically $1 to an individual? I have a feeling they
could have gotten 80% of the benefit with far less than 20% of the work by
creating a batch file on everyone's desktop that puts the computer to sleep
and asking them to click it after they're done for the day. Sure a lot of
people wouldn't, but you'd also be saving all the money spent on creating
their system for automating the shut downs.

~~~
MikeCapone
It isn't a lot of money for Ford, but these days, automakers will take
whatever they can get. It might also just be the beginning of a bigger energy
efficiency initiative.

If they can reduce recurring costs by a few millions, that's money that can be
put to better use somewhere else.

