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By Knight Kiplinger

The Kiplinger Washington Editors

July 2, 2009

By year-end or so, Congress will give the nod to a major rewriting of the nation's financial regulatory system. This week’s Kiplinger Letter explores whether the package will do more harm than good and what lawmakers are likely to include.

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: The Economy, Business Costs, Taxes, Supreme Court, Energy, Workplace Regulations, Climate Change, Health Care Legislation and Foreign Policy

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I just attended a franchise seminar. The speaker represents a few hundred franchises that (he says) are hand picked. He has the prospect (aka victim?) answer some questions about themselves then he makes recomendations - based on your personality, capital situation, etc.. If you pick a franchise, then he does some due dilligence for you. If you both decide it's a good idea, he helps you get started. He says he offers this service free of charge, which means he gets a commission if he's able to sell you a franchise. Has anyone done this? Successfully? Unsuccessfully?

-- fender

Slash Energy Costs on Servers

Learn how to tame the real energy hogs in your IT departments from the first monthly "GreenTips" column.

Worth Reading: The Quick Take from Kiplinger

August 2007

Andrew Binstock

Greener World Media Inc.

This month's author, Andrew Binstock, is principal analyst at Pacific Data Works LLC, where he performs market analysis and writes white papers for private clients. He is also the technology editor of GreenerComputing.

"GreenTips" is a monthly Kiplinger Recommends feature by Greener World Media Inc., which publishes environmental news and advice for business, including GreenBiz.com, GreenerBuildings, ClimateBiz and GreenerComputing .

How many computer servers does your firm have dedicated to one crucial database management system or other legacy application that needs its own operating system? And how much energy do those gluttons suck down a year -- not just in consumption, but in the power it takes to keep them cool and compensate for the extra heat they throw off?

Most companies have several, if not many such servers. And they and computer usage overall should be the first targets of any concerted effort to cut energy consumption for both financial and environmental reasons. Andrew Binstock, the technology editor of GreenerComputing, explains how reliable "virtualization" technology has finally evolved to a level of sophistication, reliability and speed that it will allow one server to act as several. "By moving these applications onto a single platform, IT sites save almost the entire energy consumption of the original server, the cooling costs of that server, and also gain greater manageability by having applications running on fewer physical machines," Binstock writes.

This is the first of a regular monthly "GreenTips" column aimed at helping businesses cope with all kinds of environmental issues -- for bottom-line, regulatory and customer relations reasons. It is being written by Greener World Media, publisher of GreenerComputing and other Web sites that offer businesses advice on going green.

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