Lenovo ‘Blue Sky’ saves the planet

September 13th, 2007

Good news for the planet, Lenovo has just announced their latest energy-saving desktop code-named Blue Sky now rather un-sexily re-branded as the ThinkCentre A61e. The press release states that this latest offering from Lenovo can save users up to 50% in energy costs when compared to previous, presumably Lenovo, models. How have they managed to do this? Well here’s a breakdown of some of the more pertinent and energy-saving features on this little sucker.

* Use of energy saving processors, namely the 45 watt AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual core and AMD Sempron single core
* Low speed fan
* Low noise level
* Manufactured from up to 90% reusable/recyclable materials plus 90% recyclable packaging

Consequently the unit has earned Lenovo a Gold Star from EPEAT, the Green Electronics Council and exceeds the EPA’s Energy Star 4.0 criteria. And the savings for you and me? Well Lenovo believe

A user could save on average more than $20 a year in energy savings and the equivalent of the carbon dioxide emissions created by two round-trip plane flights from Boston to New York.

Twenty bucks a year is nothing to write home about, but how can you put a price on the nice warm fuzzy feeling you get from saving the planet, eh?

Other upsides to this unit include it only being the size of a phonebook and weighing in at 8 lbs and the basic model sports a US$449 price tag whilst featuring XP Pro, 512 MB memory, 80 GB HDD, a 64 MB ATI Radeon X1200 card and a DVD reader. Not bad, eh? The downside? Well, its butt ugly, but when you’re saving the planet what does beauty matter.

Source: Lenovo