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Businesses and home users can help the environment and save money at the same time by making better use of basic tools for desktop PC power management.

A Microsoft executive shared techniques the company has used, including new kinds of employee incentive programs and internally created automation tools, to reduce the energy consumption of its growing data centers.

Until recently, many CIOs didn't know how much electricity their IT equipment used, and they didn't care.

Measure, measure, measure: It's one of the pieces of advice repeatedly doled out to companies looking to make their datacenters more energy-efficient. Without question, it's a sound suggestion; if you don't know where you're starting from, how do you know where you should go or whether you've made any progress?

With its 7,000-square-foot datacenter nearing capacity, NetApp decided last year to squeeze more out of the space. By consolidating servers and replacing older hardware, the company created an energy-efficient, high-density facility with superior server utilization. That, in and of itself, is a worthy sustainable-tech project, but special kudos go to NetApp's unsung heroes who dealt with the upgraded datacenter's dirty little secret -- a whole lot of hot air.

Fujitsu is by no means new to the green-tech party: Since launching a broad environmental initiative way back 1991, the company has worked diligently to reduce waste and pollutants within its operations while advancing the green features in its array of products.

Embarking down the sustainable IT path can be pretty daunting. You may very well appreciate, in a general sense, the potential benefits you can reap from green IT, including lower costs and a better environmental track record.

Apple said it has enterprise business support for its iPhone 2.0 beta release, but several senior IT executives expressed skepticism and even ridiculed Apple for having little big business expertise.

"Many CIOs are a little cavalier about making raising customer satisfaction an explicit goal," says Harley Manning, vice president and director of Forrester Research's customer experience group. Rather, he says, objectives such as cost avoidance and innovation are far more likely to receive top billing on a CIO's project roster. That's because not only is bolstering customer loyalty a hard sell among corporate bean counters, its (arguably) intangible benefits and its (allegedly) nebulous returns often make it a thankless job. After all, when it comes to customer feedback, CIOs typically hear one of two things: harsh criticism or the sound of one hand clapping."

Do you know how much your home office costs? I'm not talking about the price you paid for the equipment (you probably do know that amount). Rather, I mean how much of a financial and environmental burden it is to you and your community on an ongoing basis.

Green computing is a hot-button issue right now, but not all the ideas out there are practical for data centers. "It's 90% hype," says Ben Stewart, senior vice president of facilities planning at Terremark Worldwide. He's dubious about solar and wind power, for example. But Stewart says 10% of the ideas are win-win: Done right, certain green initiatives can increase energy efficiency, reduce carbon emissions and yield savings.