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CHAPTER

Hardware Considerations

A
huge expense for your organization comes in the form of hardware. You want the
equipment that meets your business’s goals and functions, but you also want to pay
as little as you can. As we’ve talked about already, it isn’t just the machines
themselves that cost money. The power that goes into them adds to the cost.
This chapter looks at different ways you can select computers for your organization that
use less power. This means you’ll spend less money in the long run and will cause less
damage to the environment.
Remember, too, as you read: The power savings may seem small in some cases, but
that’s only for one machine. When you realize those costs across hundreds or thousands of
computers in your organization, you’ll see some real savings.

Certification Programs
These days, it isn’t difficult to find hardware that is energy efficient. In the past, you had to
really buckle down, read labels, and understand the ins and outs of power consumption to
make a thoughtful decision. Today, you can certainly compare the attributes of different
computers and components if you want, but you don’t have to because a number of
certification programs take care of the hard work for you. You can just look at a product
and—depending on what level of certification it has—know that you’ll save money.
This section looks at some common certification programs and explains how you can
use them to your benefit.

EPEAT
We talked about the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) in Chapter 2.
There aren’t a lot of machines out there that have been EPEAT certified; however, because
this is a mandate for U.S. government procurement—and because the government buys
a lot of computers each year—look for manufacturers to kick up their production of
EPEAT-certified machines.
EPEAT evaluates electronic products according to three tiers of environmental
performance: bronze, silver, and gold.

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