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CeBIT is the world's largest computer expo. It is held each spring on the world's largest fairground in Hanover, Germany, and is a barometer of the state of the art in information technology. With an exhibition area of roughly 5 million square feet and up to 700,000 visitors, the fair opens to the public on Saturday March 8th.
A total of 5,845 exhibitors from 77 countries are taking part in the 2008 trade show that has environmentally-friendly technology as one of this year’s themes; in particular the special focus on the needs of large corporate and government buyers.
An article over on German site DW-World.de covers CeBIT 2008’s green push and brings up some interesting comments from the opening day.
"If you exclude transportation and travel, PCs and information technology are probably the area with the fastest-growing consumption," said Microsoft head Steve Ballmer at the trade fair's formal opening on Monday.
If cited statistics showing the world's computer and telecommunications systems cause about 2 percent of carbon dioxide emissions are to be believed, then this puts ICT up there with the world's aircraft engines in terms of the amount of carbon emitted.
Responding to criticism of the huge electricity demands from Internet server "farms", Ballmer said Microsoft would publish policies it had developed for power reduction in its data centres. Interestingly, (and this is something that I wasn’t aware of, and isn’t a point Microsoft has much made of) Ballmer also added that, when idling, the new Windows Vista operating system uses 3 percent of the energy of the older XP system.
Follow the link above to check out the entire article.
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