Does green tech mean wimpy tech? Dell thinks not

In certain green IT circles, there may be the perception that if you go "green" you're somehow skimping on features. I'm not sure where this idea came from, honestly.

Let's pause for a moment to try to figure it out. Could it come from the idea that you need to use a thin client, which means you can't run software natively on the device? Could it come from the notion that you need to stick with older servers and just try to use them more wisely? Who knows.

Anyway, the folks at Dell are refuting this urban myth today with a post on their corporate social responsibility blog about their Alienware M11x notebook.

I'm not personally a user of the Alienware line, but I know they are some of the baddest, fastest systems out there because of the graphics intensity of what they're running. But Dell disputes the idea that in order to have a 15-inch laptop that SCREAMS in graphics performance that you have to use more power. For starters, the system uses a low-voltage processor from Intel. It also lets you switch different energy modes and dim the LEDs if you want to "Go Dark."

Now, it may very well indeed be true that the greenest technology is the most expensive technology. Many of the power-optimized advances in the Intel architecture are, after all, coming on its most high-end systems. But, the fact is that power management is simply become tablestakes for every new system out on the market, if it expects to get anywhere.