POWER PLAY

Our upcoming April issue of Law Technology News has two articles that discuss a hot trend in our legal tech world: virtual servers -- a way to use software to maximize use of your hardware. (It should be up online early next week.)  They are not only efficient ways to maximize your resources, but virtual servers also help you run a green operation.

In the same vein, Tuesday's issue of The Wall Street Journal, has a tasty article by Jim Carlton, "IT Managers Make a Power Play," that talks about a range of efforts IT staff are doing to cut energy costs. Among its points:

* Surveyor, from Verdiem Corp., automatically turns off despktops when they aren't in use. This is different from screen savers, which shut off monitors to save screen life, but actually use more current, he explains.

* "Thin Client" barebone PC terminals can slash power usage by a third, says Charlton, citing the experience of the Verizon Wireless call center.

*Hewlett Packard Co. expects to drop its power consumption by 25% over three years, by consolidating its servers and data centers.

* Intel Corp. says its Dual-Core Intel Xeon 7100 microprocessors for servers triples performance.

* Microsoft Corp. has beefed up its "sleep" feature in Vista.  "PCs draw as much as 100 watts of power even when they aren't in use, compared with as little as three or four in sleep mode," writes Charlton.