Update: HP’s new Energy Star PCs come with XP, not Vista

If you go to the business desktop PCs section of HP’s Web site, you’ll see this phrase prominently displayed at the top: “HP recommends Windows Vista Business.”

The company might need to put a temporary parenthetical caveat beside the glowing recommendation: “unless you want a more energy-efficient system.”

That’s the conclusion I’ve reached, anyway, after reading about HP’s new set of Energy Star 4.0-compliant business desktop computers. The systems — the Compaq dc5700, dc5750 and dc7700 — will come loaded with Windows XP Pro, not Vista.

Why not Vista? When I first spoke to a couple of HP reps yesterday, I didn’t come away with a clear answer; just a feeling that I’d touched on a hot-button issue. Or perhaps a hot CPU issue?

But in a follow-up e-mail, Todd Kruse, the global desktop product manager at HP, said this:

“We will introduce Windows Vista configurations that are Energy Star 4.0-ready in the near future. Because we were able to begin testing all the components including the 80% efficient power supply with Windows XP earlier, we are much farther ahead in confirming compliance with XP combinations.”

“Also, there will be demand for Energy Star on both operating systems as some customers may want to wait for the first Microsoft service pack before they deploy Vista.”

When I did speak with Kruse on Thursday, he explained that there are plenty of hardware considerations when developing a PC that meets the more stringent Energy Star 4.0 guidelines, which take effect in July. These guidelines “apply mainly to a PC’s efficiency in idle mode, not how well it runs under a maximum workload.”

HP told me that the EPA doesn’t expect more than 25 percent of PCs to meet that standard, whereas currently 98 percent of the systems on the market meet the current one. It’s all about raising that energy-efficiency bar.

There are actually three categories of Energy Star 4.0 PCs. These HP systems are “category B” systems, meaning they “must have multi-core processor(s) or greater than one discrete processor; and a minimum of 1GB of system memory” to meet the new ES 4.0 requirements, plus they can’t use more than 65 watts while in idle mode (meaning when the PC is up and running, waiting for input from the user).

According to Kruse, it took some effort to come up with configurations that would meet that standard. “In some configurations, you may not be able to add graphics cards and a network card. You really need to measure [the energy consumption] of every configuration and determine if it’s Energy Star compliant.”

HP provided some very basic specs of what comes with its new Energy Star 4.0 configurations (again, which come with Windows XP Pro): The highest-end model includes a Core2 Duo E6300 CPU (which has a clock speed of 1.8GHz), an 80GB hard drive, and 1GB of RAM).

Now consider Vista’s recommended system requirements for Windows Vista Business: a 1 GHz CPU, 1GB of system memory, and a 40GB hard drive with at least 15GB of available space. (Windows XP Pro, on the other hand, requires at just a 233MHz CPU, plus 128MB of system memory and 1.5GB of hard drive space.)

So based on the aforementioned Vista systems requirements and the basic specs of HP’s systems, there shouldn’t be a problem, right? Perhaps the problem lies in Vista Business’s graphics card requirements, necessary to keep the oh-so pretty Aero GUI so cool and refreshing (pun intended, though perhaps not noticed).

HP’s higher-end, Energy Star 4.0-ready dc7700, for example, comes equipped with an Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3000, which is a stripped-down version of the GMA 950 (which was created with running Vista in mind.) On the 3000, hardware video acceleration such as IDCT MPEG-2, ProcAmp (video stream independent color correction), and VC-1 decoding are missing.

I’m certainly not trying to knock HP here. I think it’s notable that the company is ahead of the game in terms of cranking out systems that meet the new ES 4.0 regs and cut per-PC power consumption by as much as 52 percent. I also like that HP is making 80 percent-efficiency power supplies available (for $20 more) as an option on nearly all of its dc5 and dc7 configurations, whether they meet the other Energy Star criteria or not.

But I do think that companies like HP have their work cut out for them in terms of delivering the higher-efficiency ES 4.0 PCs that can take full advantage of Vista. And it seems the burden is on the shoulders of the hardware makers to carry the processing-hungry load of the new Windows system. Perhaps it’s time we see greater coding efficiency, not only out of Microsoft but other app vendors so as to reduce the strain on CPUs.

And I also wonder if the push for more energy-efficient systems will result in a rise in Linux adoption. But that’s a topic for another day.