Going green with eco-friendly products benefits the planet and it can also be a useful tool in cutting office operating costs. Environmentally conscious offices now have the option of selecting eco-friendly office gadgets to replace old ones that suck up electricity and pump out waste, and just because these products are ?green,? doesn?t mean they sacrifice usefulness or productivity. Here are five amazing eco-friendly office gadgets that will make you feel even better about saving money.

1. D1 Mini Atom PC

Despite this tiny PC?s size (it?s as tall as a roll of scotch tape and measures 20cm by 30.5cm), the D1 Mini Atom PC packs the punch of any traditional desktop computer. This micro-machine was designed for office workers and runs Windows 7 and office suite software on its 2 x 1.66 GHz processor, while consistently using less than 28 watts of electricity. The D1 is 67% smaller, weighs less, and uses far less juice than its closest competitors. And if the customer decides on the super fast SSD hard drive, the D1 doesn?t make a sound (no fan, it uses passive cooling). The D1 uses 80% less energy than other small form PCs, which can cut utility costs and keep energy from being wasted on clunky, old computers.

2. Cables Unlimited Eco-Friendly Battery-Free USB Wireless Optical Mouse

Wire-free, check. Battery-free, check. What? Check out this innovative wireless mouse that has eliminated the need to keep tossing dead batteries in the trashcan. When wireless mice first hit the scene, office workers cheered, but the landfills groaned as more and more disposable batteries were being tossed. This eco-friendly mouse gets its power directly from its mouse pad using RFID technology. Don?t worry about how it works, just think about how much money will be saved when replacing dead batteries is a thing of the past. The mouse has two scroll wheels and six buttons, which will certainly fit the needs of the average office employee.

3. Move Eco Plus DAB Radio

The Move Eco Plus rechargeable DAB digital and FM radio would fit brilliantly on any desk. Use the built-in speaker or headphone jack to stay entertained throughout the week, as this portable radio can play 40 hours of digital music on a single charge. Stay in tune and save some electricity with the Move Eco Plus DAB Radio.

4. EcoStapler

If there were some alternative to metal staples, offices could save on supplies and the planet would waste less metal. The inventive EcoStapler uses no staples and can clip up to three sheets, using a folding technique, in a single squeeze. It costs about as much as a traditional stapler and is perfect for attaching memos and cheques, while eliminating the need for paperclips.

5. Desktop Water-Powered Calculator

This is one cool calculator. Fill it with a splash of water every few months and this calculator is ready to crunch some numbers. Its electrodes power the calculator?s 12-digit display without a single battery, how neat is that? This product is sure to revolutionize the eco-friendly market.

We hope you enjoyed this article. This is a guest article by Dan Harrison who’s into green gadgets in a big way! Dan writes about low power PCs and eco gadgets on a daily basis, and always tries to use eco-friendly alternatives when buying green gadgets.

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Was it worth the investment?

Definitely as the speed performance is noticable in this case and shows on this computer system. From startup to working with multiple applications within Windows 7. It’s all a very smooth experience. Obviously this will all depend on what you use your computer for and its specification. So you might not get the desired results and might not be worth upgrading. Leave a comment if you have any questions.

However you have to take into account factors such as how much you invest in a machine over a time period, cost of installing hardware, disposal costs and the price of new systems and packages available, that often come pre-bundled with an  operating system, often newer if your machine is quite old. The cost of a new operating system brought seperately, versus one bundled with a machine can often make purchasing a new machine quite tempting.

I was able to install the CPU myself within ten minutes. I had the thermal compound already and anti static wrist strap from previous computer building. So there are additional costs involved, especially if you don’t do the install yourself. If you need to hire someone, think again and assess your options.

So what where the steps I took?

1) I downloaded a manual for my motherboard and made sure I knew what was compatible and if I needed to upgrade my motherboard bios. I’ve updated many bios’s, but am always weary of this and it can go horribly wrong.

2) I waited for the right deal on ebay as I was in no rush.

3) I made sure I set aside enough time and workspace to do the upgrade. No point rushing it as mistakes can happen that way.

4) I used the anti static wrist strap at all times.

5) Once I removed the fan, I then lifted the leaver and removed the old cpu. Which I’ve kept in the box the replacement CPU came in. I might then resell this on ebay to return part of the costs of upgrading.

6) Before I placed the new CPU in, I placed the thermal compound on the new CPU and then inserted into the slot and gently pushed down the leaver.

6) I cleaned up the underneath of the fan and then replaced that.

Luckily it booted first time and Windows 7 noticed a new CPU, updated it’s system and then required a reboot. Sorry I took no photos of the process and obviously you follow the steps above I took at your own risk.

Why not leave feedback with your thoughts on computer upgrades.

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It all depends on your needs and if and how you utilize any servers you may have. The NAS box I brought was cheap and not power hungry. However it can act as a dhcp server, ftp server, itunes library (has bonjour) and a print server…. but I just wanted to use it for basic network storage. It runs a cut down version of linux for it’s operating system and you need to allow up to three minutes for boot up.

In the poor quality picture below you can see the network and usb connector. I have tried this box with a usb printer before and it worked well. Then the attached printer is seen on the network and easy to install.

The install….

I have used this NAS box before with raid and it worked well, but I only wanted to install one old hard drive (a 60gig ide) this time I had spare. If you are considering a NAS box purely for part of a backup procedure, then buying two indentical hard drives and using raid is a good idea.

As you will notice from the picture, space is tight and I choose to connect the ide cable to the hard drive before I screwed the hard drive rack into place. This gave me a bit more room to work with.

Now this isn’t a quiet hard drive I used and in this NAS box it truly sounds like I am in a server room. Loud enough that it won’t be sitting in the main area, instead in another room out of the way.

I had previously upgraded the firmware to the latest version. Before I used the nas box again I reset the device by using a unfolded paperclip in the reset switch on power up and leaving it for ten seconds or so. I had also plugged in a network cable linking it directly to the router acting as a dhcp server. On boot up it was given a dhcp address which I then I worked out which is easy enough (I could of just connected it solely to a laptop / desktop computer and it would of then used a default ip address after the reset).

You access the configuration via your browser (chrome, firefox, IE  etc) and once logged in, straight away I changed the password for the device and gave it a static ip address. Then I formatted the hard drive. I could chose partition types ext2, ext3 and fat32. I left the default ext2. There is also a scandisk option and encryption, which I didn’t want to use.

Next step was to configure the users, which is very easy. You can assign users their own directories, allowed spaced, password etc or just share a specific area to a defined group of users.

Once setup it was then just a case of browsing to the network device via windows explorer.

From here I can access and map a directory to a drive letter on the computer if wanted. Plus if a printer had been connected I could of installed a printer also to be used on this computer.

So the conclusion? It’s noisy, but it’s very good. It’s feature rich, cheap, low powered, small, easy to configure and use. However if you want an external hard drive, but no need for network sharing a cheaper usb hard drive enclosure might be a better alternative for you. I will write a blog post regarding those soon.

For further reading material regarding the device I used and similar models you can visit: http://mrt.nas-central.org/wiki/Main_Page

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After a while I managed to unbrick the WRT54g router and gain access. I installed a free piece of firmware called ‘tomato’. Some newer models of WRT54g’s can use this firmware, but my older model was suitable. So make sure you check before attempting an upgrade. Even though there were ‘official’ firmware upgrades available the third party ‘tomato’ firmware also adds other new features. By upgrading firmware you can often gain new features, without needing to buy new hardware. Increased security being one among many benefits in this instance.

Then I configured the adsl router  and once configured I plugged a network cable from the adsl router to the wrt54g wan port (network port on it’s own, far left).

I rebooted the adsl router and then once rebooted, I then rebooted the wrt54g also. Things to note… I had configured the adsl router to give out an ip address to the wrt54g automatically for internet access (via wan port) and the wrt54g in turn gives out via dhcp, ip addresses to wired and wireless devices on a different range. This isn’t to be confused with the wrt54g also having a static ip address (on same range for wired & wireless devices) for it’s dhcp role.

So what was this ‘tomato’ firmware I mentioned?

The tomato firmware is one of many free firmwares available for certain models of buffalo and wrt54g routers. The reason why I used this firmware was not only is it quite configurable and feature rich, but included is the ability to monitor bandwidth usage…. realtime, daily, weekly etc. Useful if you have a capped limited or just want to know your usage for the internet or local network connections.

You can find the Tomato firmware here: http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato

So the end result being I’ve replaced the old faulty adsl router and gained new features. Plus used hardware I already had available. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

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However it left me with a spare agp graphics card that was perviously in the computer…. so I decided to install it into my server that was using an onboard graphics chipset and had a spare agp slot.

Here are the steps I took:

1) Attached and put on my anti static wrist strap (below is a picture of the anti static strap and card). Anti static wrist straps are very cheap and a good purchase.

2) In the case you can see the agp slot (one at top with green border and looks different to pci).

3) Removed a slot plate for the case and then inserted the graphics card carefully.

Be warned make sure you check your warranty first. The computer I installed the card into was old and out of warranty. Also if you don’t want to install drivers via Microsoft, best visit the manufacturer / vendor site before you do the upgrade and place the drivers in a folder ready for when you turn the machine back on. The manufacturer / vendor will often have drivers and software that will improve performance and allow more configuration.

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Valid question, skype has just been released for the Apple iphone, the iphone demonstration I heard was impressive. Obviously you can also use skype on your computer, plug in a headset and off you go. So again why buy this feature poor device?

Being an early adopter of skype I’ve used it on various versions of windows and also linux (by the way can someone from skype please update the linux port, many thanks). I’ve grown tired of being ‘tethered’ to my desktop tower or the laptop to use skype. With a cable trailing over the desk getting in the way when on a  call, threatening to relocate my mug of tea……

Not wanting to invest in the cheap usb skype devices with their limitations. Avoiding an issue of the skype connection ringing just when I need to reboot or happen to have various windows open across my desktop for graphics, documents and my email using up precious resources.

The iphone is tempting, but doesn’t fit my requirements. Justification of a phone contract or one off iphone charge for a pay as you go package, forking out the amount for a device I just won’t use to it’s full potential. So when researching and reading reviews I realised the old Belkin Skype Phone might be just the answer, but was it?

A few auctions later and I purchased my new phone. Only to discover it turned up not booting up properly. A great start! Two firmware upgrades later and a heart bypass, it was working. I installed the firmware via usb using a Windows XP laptop.

Straight away seeing wifi networks, but what about my network that doesn’t broadcast it’s SSID? No problem I was able to manually type in the details on the keypad, whilst silently cursing myself for having a very long SSID and password. WPA-PSK no problem (other options ‘open’ or WEP, which should probably be classified as ‘open’ also) and smoothly connected to my mixed 802.11b/g network. The ability to assign a static IP and port is available, though I have not tried yet.

I used it at two different WPA-PSK private wifi locations that so far and it happily choose the correct pre-configured access point without any issues. Dare I say… I even left my desk and took the phone with me across to the other side of the building, thus providing more flexibility as the wifi signal works there also.

Although I wouldn’t say the call quality is brilliant, I am aware there are many factors that can contribute to that. However I’ve experience ‘mobile call’ level quality, which has been fine. It’s working with my skypeIn account also and the accompanying answer service.

So will this connect with public free wifi? The phone does not offer browser based authentication. So I couldn’t take advantage of free wifi. However before I purchased I realised I wasn’t too bothered by this. Although it would have been a very nice feature, it is not critical to my work.

I believe the device can work with Boingo and the Cloud, however I don’t have an account with either, so can’t tell you that for certain. Would be interested to receive comments from those who have used it with either or others services, if any are available.

So what else can it do? Well not much more… I can change my status. However you can’t use it for skype IM text chat, which is a shame. What about skypeOut? Well I don’t use it, so never bothered to see if the device can. Sorry. Also I’m not sure if you can use this device in a skype conference call, I don’t believe I can initiate these and perhaps even participate using this device. If you have please leave a comment.

So where does this review leave you? Well it’s a basic device, it won’t fit everybody’s requirements. However for the price (I paid around £50) and my requirements, it suits my needs ‘almost’ exactly. Only wishing it could cope with Skype’s IM text service.

No more headphone cables, no more worrying about firewall settings on my computer or whether I’ve got too many programs running already. It sits there on my desk and I can charge it via a usb cable to a computer or a power supply adapter.

Want to find out more? Try: http://www.belkin.com/uk/skype/howitworks/ to begin with. There are other skype devices not made by belkin that can do wifi or suit other requirements such as sharing pstn and wifi into one device. However I highly recommend you do your homework and read other reviews before you purchase, otherwise could be a costly mistake if not for you.

Happy to answer any questions via comments.

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Tip #1: Screen – Make sure when traveling around that your screens brightness is set appropriately. If your sitting in a well lit room, dim the brightness down in System Preferences or with the keyboard shortcut – it’ll save you a good chunk of power that can be used for other things. The same can be said for volume – if you don’t need to hear your computer, turn the volume down all the way or mute them so the speakers turn off.

Tip #2: Applications – Although we’d all love to be able to Photoshop or do video editing on the fly, theres no use trying if your looking to have your battery last. Although Macs are fairly capable in the editing and design catagory, doing these sorts of activities when on the go is a big strain on your processor and graphics card. Save the Photoshop for when your plugged in and use the battery for lighter activities such as browsing the web, managing your contacts and calendar, and word processing – these will keep your Mac running for a long time.

Tip #3: Less is More – When on the go, the less you have open is better. For example, background applications like the Last.fm scrobbler or Evernote can run your battery life down, even when their not in use. Its best to disable these applications unless their absolutely necessary, and make sure when your not using the internet that your Airport Card is turned off. Handy apps such as Quicksilver can also help you do more with less: find the application or file your looking for without opening lots of power draining Finder windows or other applications, scan anywhere on your computer for notes, images or music, compose emails, run Terminal scripts, or browse to a website bookmark! Always be on the lookout for time saving apps, because everything you do adds up and can take its toll on your battery!

Tip #4: Charge Appropriately – We all want our Macs batteries to last a long time, so make sure when your charging your computer that you do it at an appropriate time. Let the battery run down before charging it – doing so will keep the batterys memory lasting longer. Remember: Mac batteries are only good for 300 full cycles (from 100% to 0% charge is 1 cycle), so make sure your not continuously charging it when it might not need to be!

Tip #5: Storage – If your not going to be using your laptop for awhile, or you won’t have your Mac laptop leaving your desk, make sure to store your battery away to prolong its lifespan. When storing your battery, its proper to run it down to about 50% of its capacity and then store in a cool, dry location (ie a drawer or perhaps the box your Mac shipped in).

Thats about it for my battery saving tips, I hope they’re of use to you and they help you save lots of energy for those important work meetings!

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13 Inch Macbook – Aluminum Unibody

First, I’ll start with the positive notes. First and foremost, the units look very nice – the keyboard colour is not so nice (black just doesn’t work), but the aluminum unibody design and contoured edges are beautiful. The screen wasn’t too bad – the glare was only really noticeable if you we’re looking for it. The screens we’re extremely thin and opened and closed so easily, a big change from older units. The unit was clearly lighter then older Macbook models and would be a charm to carry around.

Now, the downsides. Like I said before, the black doesn’t really work with the unit – it could’ve easily been white or silver and it would’ve looked fine, but the black just stands out too much for a Macbook. The trackpad…. it just felt too small for this unit. I couldn’t work the different multitouch gestures built into it because of the size of the trackpad – attempting to get 3 or 4 fingers on the pad at the same time was a chore. One I wouldn’t want to bother with if I was using the unit for work. Size aside, the trackpad worked very well – it felt only slightly different from the older trackpads, and the gesture recognition was superb. The buttonless design felt very natural, and 2 finger clicking for contextual menus was extremely easy to do and to get used to. Graphics and power-wise, I couldn’t determine too well what the battery life would be like, but the machine was speedy and gave me an estimated 3:45 of battery life running Photoshop CS4, Final Cut Express and Aperture. For peripherals, I’d have to give this unit a failing mark – no Firewire whatsoever on them. This choice on Apple’s behalf became even more confusing as we walked around the rest of the Apple Store, finding an entire showcase of Firewire 400/800 external hard drives. Why?

Overall: I think that the unit looks good and feels good. The downside here is that the trackpad just wasn’t implemented properly – it needs to be bigger for it to work properly with the multitouch gesture capability. Sadly, the lack of Firewire on these units, with the technology of today heavily relying on it, makes this unit not worth buying in my opinion. Without Firewire, I can’t use my digital video camera or external hard drive, a whopping $900 of useless technology. Why should I pay another $1400 to get a new laptop if I’ll need to spend another $1000 to replace my 2 year old “outdated” equipment? Sorry Apple, but that was a bad decision.

15 Inch Macbook Pro Aluminum Unibody

Once again, I’ll start with the good. This unit was, like the Macbook, beautiful to look at and use. On this unit, the trackpad also sees a significant increase in usable size, making the trackpad implementation and the ability to use multitouch gestures easy and simple. It has 1 Firewire 800 port, which is OK (at least its there), and the additional graphics card is nice to have (although requires a restart to activate).

Now for the downsides. The unit has somehow managed to become heavier then previous 15 inch models, as well as wider! This renders my current laptop bag almost useless for storing it, and puts another half a pound of weight on my shoulder every single day. The lack of Firewire 400 is a big hit for this unit too, and it has the same god awful keyboard. But despite those things, my biggest gripe here is “Whats the point?” -compared to the new Macbooks, this unit has 2 inches of difference. The 2nd graphics card makes very little impact on performance, and the Firewire 800 should be on the Macbook anyways. Other then those 3 very little things, they are identical in everyway. Now you don’t even need to buy the professional grade unit to do professional work – this units $2200 pricetag isn’t worth it if you can save $1000 and get a slightly smaller (and lighter!) unit.

Overall: Its beautiful, and its labelled Pro, but the $1000 difference is now completely unnecessary. I’d buy one again if forced to buy a new laptop, but other then that I’d just get the Macbook – its almost identical.

The Verdict

In my opinion, whether or not you need to upgrade to one of the new Macbooks / Macbook Pros really comes down to whether or not you use Firewire 400 and 800 in your business environment – both units have an identical design and almost identical inner workings, but you’ll only find Firewire 800 on the new Macbook Pros, which means if you need Firewire 400, you might want to stick with your older Mac in the meantime!

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Small Businesses like councils and anyone else should make sure any device they no longer have use for should be disposed via set guidelines…..among them don’t leave any data that can easily be recovered or recovered at all, when in doubt seek advice and the proper support.

Data protection when selling on old hardware in the small business world is a joke and in future posts we will provide tips and advice to help you minimize your risks. Don’t forget to add the blogs rss feeds to your news reader or bookmark the site.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7635622.stm

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Well in the small business world it is slightly different… okay a lot different.  However you still have people starting up businesses who buy themselves a new laptop from PC World or a consultant who must have the latest laptop to help them work more productively (really). Obviously if you are using system hungry, intensive applications then it might well be worth buying a new laptop, but have a run through the list below to help you decide. Here are some tips on how to breath new live into your old laptop and save some money at the same time!

- Battery

If your battery isn’t holding much of a charge it is time to go buy a new one. Often you can find unused batteries for laptops on ebay or online. It isn’t worth buying a used battery though.

Tips for battery management:

• To help extend the life of your battery don’t forget to set the power management settings to maximize you use of it. E.g. lower cpu usage for when you are just doing word processing and higher cpu usage for graphics and video editing etc.
• Every so often let your battery completely run out of charge and then recharge it completely.

- Clean up and Defragmentation

Yep removing files such as old documents or uninstalling software that you no longer use will help. Plus defragmenting your hard drive is useful also. While you are at it, before you do all that best do a backup and run a hard drive diagnostics also.

- RAM

On many laptops it is easy to upgrade the ram and now is an ideal time with ram being so cheap. Before you buy any though check how many slots you have, whether you need to replace a piece of ram and the highest amount of ram your laptop can take.

- CD rom

A great replacement is to buy a DVD / cd writer if you don’t already have one for your laptop. All of a sudden you can watch dvd’s when on the road write to CD’s if required.

- Clean Install and tweak your system

Do a complete backup and then make sure you have all the drivers, software and operating system installation cd’s with product keys etc and do a clean install.

Tweak tips:

• For older specs remove the desktop background (wallpaper)
• Disable fancy graphics effects.
• Disable sound effects.
• Research what you can disable from startup in msconfig and not expose your system or lose required functionality.

- Be more selective with applications and do upgrades

Some applications are monsters! No not the scary kind, the large memory hungry kind. Consider using smaller lighter applications if they provide the functionality you require…

Suggested apps:

• Abiword instead of Microsoft Word
• Sumatra PDF instead of Adobe Acrobat Reader
• CDBurnerXP instead of Nero (because of the additional files Nero installs)
• Windows Media Player Classic instead of Windows Media Player

Plus consider upgrading existing packages. Often they fix memory leaks, improve performance and of course you might get new features.

- Linux

On many machines that were running WIndows 98, ME or 2000 an install of a Linux operating system might still give good performance, but enable you to use an operating system that is still being updated to protect you against security concerns but also with a wide range of software. E.g. Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse etc. Be weary of issues with device compatiblity though, best to try a liveCD first to try out.

- Other upgrades

• Hard drive technology has improved and often replacing a hard drive to give increased space will also give you increased performance as the newer hard drive might be quicker.
• For some laptops you can also buy drive bay batteries, meaning you can have two batteries in your laptop at the same time.
• New drivers. Sometimes a new driver might give functionality you were missing such as improved graphics driver performance or newer wireless security.
• Bluetooth dongles are very cheap to buy, but will affect the performance of your laptop.
• A laptop stand, external keyboard and mouse if you now use the laptop in just one place primarily. Plus some docking stations for older laptops are extremely cheap.

We want to hear your tips and advice, so please don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

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