The ulterior green IT motive: Extend PC lifecycles

Back in October I wrote a couple of posts about services that are intended to tune the settings on your desktop computer. This one is about the Support.com offering and this is about another option from iYogi.

In particular, these services work by tweaking your power management settings, helping individuals save something on the order of $75 per computer in electricity or about 1,100 in carbon dioxide emission. But Marc Itzkowitz, director of product marketing for SupportSoft (the company behind the Support.com offering) suggest that there's another benefit. Simply put, some people are thinking more about extending the life of their desktops and notebooks.

"Another part of the environmental concerns is simply about landfill. Old computers getting tossed," says Itzkowitz. "We've seen new interest in the tune-up service to try to get the computer to last longer."

This blog from Marc actually walks you through how to mess with your Windows Vista system for the most optimal settings. It even has fun screenshots for the visually oriented.

So, I realize this service is pretty consumer-oriented on paper but what's the harm in applying these principles to your desktop fleet proactively? If you think the green argument is a wishy-washy one, default to the savings message. That is, unless your company DOESN'T have some kind of corporate efficiency mandate.

Sadly, people like me who are addicted to Macintosh computers still don't have a similar service. Or at least one that I know about. Apple has always been great about adding utilities to its operating system to take care of administrative tasks easily. It sure would be nice if they paid a little more attention to this.