Very green PC comes with a catch

 

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By Matthew Sparkes

Posted on 6 Mar 2008 at 15:43

Very PC has launched a multi-user system which it claims can provide a desktop PC for only 9W per user. But there's a catch; you have to buy seven.

GreenHive consists of a central server which provides keyboard, video and mouse connections for up to seven users.

A CAT-5 cable runs from this server to each user, where a small KVM device allows the connection of a keyboard, display and mouse.

"It's like virtualisation, but it's not software virtualisation, it's hardware virtualisation," says Very PC managing director, Peter Hopton. "You can have seven users sharing the hardware of one box, based on our GreenPC."

The power consumption of this central PC along with the KVM hardware equates to only 9W per user, the company claims, although these figures do not include a monitor. In comparison, the average desktop PC uses around 80W.

"There's just one PC with very low power consumption. If you exclude the screens, the maximum power consumption of the main unit works out at 9W per desktop or less," says Hopton.

The central machine is more energy efficient than a standard desktop, but still powerful enough to allow seven users to run basic office applications. A multi-core 2.3GHz AMD processor is the default specification, equipped with 4GB of DDR2 RAM.

Very PC won the Environmental Innovator award at the 2007 PC Pro Awards last December.

A GreenHive system is currently on its way to the PC Pro offices, and we will be bringing you a review as soon as we can.