Green Options

Steve Jobs (the CEO of Apple) may be known as a marketing genius, but it certainly took him a little while to realize that green is the new black. Quite certainly in response to Greenpeace's Green My Apple campaign (which I discussed previously on Green Options), Jobs has come forward saying that a greener Apple is on the horizon.

Apple recently

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Dell has expanded its Plant a Tree for Me program. You can now purchase carbon offset credits for your computer even if you don't buy a Dell.

Launched in January, the Plant a Tree for Me program asks Dell customers to voluntarily donate a couple of bucks at check-out to offset their computer purchase. That money is then given to the Conservation Fund and Carbonfund to plant trees

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The IT industry has come together to make data centers more energy efficient.

Leading computer hardware and software giants have created a consortium called the Green Grid to address their power problem. A recent report revealed that data centers, the backbone of the IT industry, are huge energy suckers. The consortium intends to look at this pressing issue and find ways to solve it.

CNET recently conducted a study to determine the amount of energy used by data centers, the backbone of the IT industry. They found that our IT economy is a huge power guzzler.

Data centers run up about $2.7 billion in energy bills in the U.S. alone and $7.2 billion across the world. What's more, the study shows that data center power consumption has roughly doubled from 2000 to 2005. Faced with such growth rates, delivering the technology that the world

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Energy Star, a federal program responsible for determining the energy efficiency of household appliances and electronics, will release the first new standards for PCs in over ten years. 

The last specifications were issued back in 1992 - ancient in computer years - garnering at least 90% of PCs on the market today the Energy Star label. The new specifications, due out in July, are aimed at power supply efficiency and idle power consumption.

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Editor's note: Megan Prusynski, GO's newest team member, is a professional graphic designer and a very prolific blogger. She'll be covering design, art and culture for us. We're happy to welcome her aboard!

Apple computers have been staples for the graphic design industry since they arrived in the early 1980s. The company prides itself on its innovative technology, attention to detail, and good design. Designers like myself are

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Speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas yesterday, Dell founder and chairman Michael Dell issued a challenge to the personal computer industry: make free recycling of used computers a standard part of doing business. According to the New York Post, Dell said,