Thin clients easier on the environment, study claims

Switching from PCs to energy-saving thin client systems could save British businesses millions, as well as cutting carbon emissions, according to Germany's Fraunhofer Institute.

Researchers found that PCs use as much as twice as much electricity as a thin client-server system. "Energy consumption when in operation was up to 50 per cent lower than for conventional PCs," said Dr Hartmut Pflaum, a Fraunhofer researcher. "While PCs consume about 85 watts on average, thin clients including their server get by with 40 to 50 watts." Reducing the amount of power used by the estimated ten million PCs in UK businesses could reduce carbon emissions output by 485,000 tons a year, as well as saving £78 million in electricity costs.

Thin clients access information held on servers but have no moving parts and little memory, so they use less power than traditional computers. As they're lighter, transportation is easier and more efficient, and as they're smaller, manufacture and disposal is easier on the environment, the study said.

The strategic director of worldwide marketing for IGEL Technology, who provided the hardware for the research, Stephen Yeo said "the impact on cutting CO2 emissions is impressive." According to Yeo, saving 485,000 tons of emissions would remove the equivalent impact of 85,000 UK homes.

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