Notebook PC users who upgrade to Microsoft’s Windows Vista may have to disable some of the new operating system’s flashy graphics features to avoid seeing a decrease in battery life compared to when running Windows XP.

The drop will come from the extra power needed to run the high-end processors, graphics cards, and memory capacity required to support Vista. Microsoft has designed the new OS to deliver novel visual effects such as the translucent “Aero” windows on the desktop interface and to offer improved performance as a digital media hub. The business version of the OS was released last month, with the consumer version due out next month.

“Vista demands more computer resources for a given application than XP does. So you need a heavier battery, or you will have shorter battery life because of the greater demand for watts,” said Phil Hester, chief technology officer of Advanced Micro Devices, in remarks made at the company’s annual analyst day in New York last week.

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The amount of energy wasted by UK office equipment left on standby over the ten-day Christmas period would be enough to roast 4.4 million turkeys, predicts hardware maker Canon.

With offices deserted, devices left running will use 43.6 million kWh of electricity. In total, the energy wastage will cost UK businesses around £8.66m.

In environmental terms, Canon’s research suggests that around 19,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide will be produced unnecessarily - enough to fill the same number of 25-metre swimming pools.

PCs are the worst energy wasters with the prediction half of them will be left on over the Christmas holiday, using 37.8 million kWh of energy. Other equipment will contribute with all fax machines expected to be left running.

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Dell announced a new operating structure Tuesday that divides the company’s product business into new blocks. At the same time, several new executives are arriving at the Round Rock, Texas, company’s offices in a bid to inject some new thinking into management ranks.

Product development at Dell is now divided into two distinct groups: the Business Product Group and the Consumer Product Group. Brad Anderson, the company’s top server executive, and Jeff Clarke, Dell’s longtime PC group leader, will share responsibility for the Business Product Group. Alex Gruzen, brought into Dell from Hewlett-Packard two years ago to run the notebook operation, will head up the Consumer Product Group.

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News source: News.com

AirMagnet Inc., the award-winning leader in wireless network assurance, announced the results of a recently conducted survey measuring wireless signal strength in a standard office setting both before and after introducing a change in the office environment — holiday decorations. While decorations are relatively commonplace at this time of year and might seem innocuous, as with any change introduced to a wireless environment, it’s difficult to predict how new elements might affect wireless performance - but proper planning can help reduce the negative effect on wireless networks. AirMagnet’s survey, using AirMagnet Survey PRO and AirMagnet Laptop Analyzer, showed the decorations had a significant impact on the Wi-Fi network, with:

* Signal strength decreased by 25 percent
* Signal deterioration increased over distance by one-third
* Signal distribution uneven in some locations, deteriorating signal strength by an additional 10 percent

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News source: AirMagnet.com

Parents and teachers are forcing some schools to dismantle wireless computer networks amid fears that they could damage children’s health.
More schools are putting transmitters in classrooms to give pupils wireless access from laptops to the school computer network and the internet.

But many parents and some scientists fear that low levels of microwave radiation emitted by the transmitters could be harmful, causing loss of concentration, headaches, fatigue, memory and behavioural problems and possibly cancer in the long term. Scientific evidence is inconclusive, but some researchers think that children are vulnerable because of their thinner skulls and developing nervous systems.

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News source: Times Online UK

Seeing I have been in the PC business for over seven years I have noticed something about the support industry.

PC support companies build their business on the backs of high school and college graduates, the people who get a job just to get by until something better comes along. These people are called hardware technicians; they bare huge responsibility and work for low pay, often for little better than minimum wage. Hardly any of these people take their job seriously and those that do are usually looking to get into a more prestigious field like Network Administration or Security. Who could blame them with such a poor pay rate? But there are a few, such as myself, who specialize in this area. The problem is this, although the market for our skills is virtually limitless, the pay is scant. The only way for serious hardware specialists to make money is to “go it alone” or start their own tech company. When we start our own firm we then have the problem of finding reliable staff. Now, considering that WE started our own firm because we were not satisfied with low pay and an excessive workload, the odds are that anyone else who we would consider reliable would be looking to do the same. So, we are left with one option: Training the staff ourselves. Naturally, just when you have someone trained, they leave and try to “go it lone”. You can see how this becomes a problem.

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News source: Tweak News

Running your computer is pretty darn cheap when viewed at an hourly rate - approximately $0.02 an hour. This figure was obtained with the following assumptions: The typical desktop computer uses around 200 watts of energy per hour (with a 50% / 50% split of energy consumed between the computer and the display screen). We pay about $0.10 per kilowatt hour for electricity where I live (this varies across the US, so you can put in your actual rate here). From there you simply divide the watts used by 1000 (since electricity is charged at a rate in kilowatts - 1000 watts) multiplied by the rate charged: 200 divided by 1000 = 0.2 x $0.10 = $0.02.

With the cost of using a computer so cheap, many people believe that it isn’t worth the time to bother turning it off. When multiplied over time, however, it can add up. That $0.02 an hour comes to $0.48 a day, $3.36 a week, $13.44 a month and $175.20 a year if you leave your computer on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

That means if you turn off the computer for half the day while asleep, you have saved $87.50. Add in a few extra hours it will likely stay off on the weekends, and you have reached $100 a year in savings by simply turning off your computer. If you have a small business with 10 computers, making sure they get turned off at night means an extra $1000 to your bottom line (and if you work for a business that rewards employees that submit money saving ideas that get implemented, you could even earn a bit of money by suggesting this).

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News source: pfadvice.com

The extrapolation of a trend that was becoming clear even as long ago as 1965, and has been the pulse of the IT industry ever since will eventually end, said Moore, who is now retired from Intel.

Forty years after the publication of his law, which states that transistor density on integrated circuits doubles about every two years, Moore said this morning: “It can’t continue forever. The nature of exponentials is that you push them out and eventually disaster happens.

“In terms of size [of transistor] you can see that we’re approaching the size of atoms which is a fundamental barrier, but it’ll be two or three generations before we get that far - but that’s as far out as we’ve ever been able to see. We have another 10 to 20 years before we reach a fundamental limit. By then they’ll be able to make bigger chips and have transistor budgets in the billions.”

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News source: Techworld.com