IPC's attractively-priced 'green' PC
By Michael Lim
OF late environment-friendly information technology equipment have been popping up in every major vendors catalogues. Nowadays you can find almost every vendor marketing at least a product which is either environment-friendly or energy-saving.
The IT industry has traditionally been seen as one of the major users of wood-based material like paper as well as electricity. The trend of preserving. the environment have gained so much momentum worldwide that now, the US Environment Protection Agency (EPA) through their Energy Star programme is promoting a new generation of IT products that are not resource hungry.
These products range from PCs to printers and even IT consumables like laser printer toner cartridges and printer ribbons. The advancement of computing power and design of personal computers are starting to take a similar approach.
These units are usually smaller in size and pack with energy saving features. But this can’t be said about the size of IPC's Dynasty G-PC (or Green PC) which was reviewed. The PC is still as bulky and heavy as the regular Dynasty PC series. And unlike the IBM PS/ 2E, IPC’s G-PC is not a fully environment-friendly machine as it contents are not made from recycled materials.
The only environment-friendly feature incorporated into the Dynasty G-PC is its adherence to the US EPA’s Energy Star programme. Under this programme, devices are required to use as little power as possible when in active or idle mode. The G-PC uses only 75 watts of electricity when in active mode and about 25 watts during power-down mode.
In this mode the monitor is switched off and the IDE controller slowed down. And during the powered down stage, G-PC’s CPU clock speed is also substantially reduced from 50 megahertz down to 16MHz. This energy-saving feature or power management feature is built into G-PC basic input/output system (BIOS) chip.
Similar to many notebooks, these power management system can be set by the user through the system’s SETUP routine. The Dynasty G-PC’s SETUP option is easily accessible-either from the DOS prompt or during the boot up sequence.
The PC incorporates a hot-key combination, Ctrl-Alt-S, to invoke the SETUP menu. Besides the basic standard settings that can be found in the regular SETUP option, the Dynasty G-PC also allows users to configure the IDE and Video Power Down options.
For the IDE controller’s Power Down option, users are allowed to specify anything from one minute to two hours. But, if you feel carefree and are not into the "green" thing, this option can be disabled. The Video Power Down option allows users to set the time anywhere from half-a-minute to two hours, and like the previous option, it can also be disabled.
We conducted a "test drive of the power management features of the Dynasty G-PC by setting both the IDE and Video Power Down options at one minute. True enough, after one minute the system went into its "sleep" mode. This was evident as there was no keyboard activity during this time. However, work could still be done using the mouse and we discovered this when working with Aldus. Page Maker
The Dynasty G-PC power management facility did not take into account mouse activity or operation when it kicks into sleep mode. And this is also true when you need to "revive" the PC back into active mode. Moving and clicking the mouse button will not do the trick. The system will only reactivate when you press any key on the keyboard. We felt this feature was rather surprising.
Picture Windows users who work mostly with the mouse. Suddenly they would have a blank screen staring at them after the stipulated time frame. To overcome this problem you could have the Video Power Down option disabled. But then, the monitor is one of the power hungry components m the PC.
Another drawback of the Dynasty G-PC is the time it takes to activate itself when the system goes into the Power Saving mode for more than a couple of minutes. The system takes at least 30 seconds to come to "life" again after pressing the key on the keyboard. And when the monitor is powered down, even the power indicator light on the monitor is turn off.
If users are not aware that the system is in "sleep" mode, they might assume that the monitor is turn off. The IPC Dynasty G-PC has a unique design for cooling down the processor.
There is no fan attached to the PC casing to cool down other system components except for a miniature fan mounted on the top of the Intel 80486 processor. Thus, the fan only cools the CPU and nothing else. The keys on the G-PC’s keyboard are little stiff and the floppy drives that come standard with the G-PC are surprisingly not as quiet compared to others that are available in the market.
On the bright side, the GPC has plenty of room for expansion. The PC comes with two 32-bit VESA-compliant local bus slots and five 16-bit local bus slots. The G-PC comes standard with 4MB of random access memory (RAM).
In addition, there are eight memory SIMM slots available which allow up to 32 megabytes of memory. The Dynasty G-PC has an additional internal hard disk bracket situated on top of the power unit, for another hard disk. Besides this, there are two full-height floppy drive bays. Should you decide to go multimedia, the CD-ROM drive can take up one unit while a backup tape drive can go into the other.
All models of the Dynasty G-PC come standard with 4MB RAM (random access memory), which is expandable to 32MB and a 256KB external cache memory. It also has a local bus VGA controller with Windows accelerator and a local BUS IDE controller.
On the storage capacity side, the Dynasty G-PC comes with a 250MB hard disk and a single dual floppy drives. All models of the Dynasty G-PC also come standard with MS-DOS 6.0 and Windows 3.1 together with their respective manuals.
On the whole, the G-PC offers a good value especially when taking into consideration the amount of room available for expansion. Expansion here is in terms of the number free of drive bays and quite a number of free BUS slots available.
The Dynasty G-PC is definitely attractively priced for a 486-DX2/5OMHz machine and should be considered by those thinking of getting such a PC for home or office use. Besides, they can also play a part in preserving the environment.
Jumble auction
THE Macintosh Users of Malaysia will hold a jumble auction for any Mac equipment, peripherals, software and books during its monthly meeting at 2.30 pm this Saturday at Micro Express Sale's office premises are Jalan Raja Laut, Kuala Lumpur.
For details, call Ungku Noorina at Tel: 03-2918000.
Source : News Straits Times, January 27 1994
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