Dell tailors Inspiron desktop for green

Even before Energy Star 4.0 went into effect, we saw business-oriented workstations available from vendors including Dell and HP. Now Dell has unveiled a line of ES 4.0-compliant systems for home users: greened-up versions of the Inspiron 531, apparently with enough oomph to run Vista.

“We are committed to providing consumers a choice that helps protect the environment without sacrificing the performance needed to maintain a rich, high-definition digital experience,” said Karen Plotkin, director of consumer desktop marketing, in a written statement. “Consumers using this energy-efficient Inspiron 531 can reduce their carbon footprint while also reducing their electric bills.”

The Inspiron 531s are powered by 80-percent efficient power supply, as required by ES 4.0. Additionally, Dell has configured the machines to enter a low-power sleep state after 15 minutes of inactivity. (Powering down systems that aren’t in use can, indeed, shave money off your energy bill.)

Moreover, the company is touting the fact that the system “includes a forest-friendly paperless owner’s manual,” which, I, as an advocate of paper-waste reduction, do appreciate. I do wonder if it means more calls to the Dell support people from non-tech-savvy users who can’t manage to get to the paperless manual to begin with.

The entry-level configuration of the Inspiron 531 comes with Vista Home Basic and includes an AMD Sempron 3600+ processor, a 1GB2 Dual Channel3 DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz- 2DIMMs; a 160GB4 SATA drive (7200RPM), as well as a CDRW/DVD combination drive and NVIDIA integrated graphics.

On the other end of the spectrum, there’s a configuration running the AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 5000+ with 2GB2 Dual Channel3 DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz- 2DIMMs; and a 500GB4 SATA 3Gbps drive (7200RPM). This one, which has Vista Home Premium installed, is listed at $1,184.

More information is available here.