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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.

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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?

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Don't Be Taken by 'Green' IT Labels

Making your IT department green means figuring out which steps really matter and which claims are true. This month's GreenTips column.

Worth Reading: The Quick Take from Kiplinger

June 2008

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 .

Green is the new low carb for marketers.

Just as cookies, chips, ice cream and cake were advertised as low in carbohydrates during that particular diet craze, companies are now trying to cash in on growing concern about conserving energy and otherwise being more environmentally conscious. The boom in green products would seem like a blessing to IT departments, which are growing increasingly desperate to control rapidly escalating energy costs. But how do you tell when upgrading or buying new equipment will really make a difference?

In this month's GreenTips column, Andrew Binstock warns that any IT manager must look at such claims from several different angles. Replacing older computers with more energy efficient computers, for example, would seem like a slam dunk, right? "Consider that a new PC for a knowledge worker costs roughly $500. How much energy would it have to save for you to actually save money on it? At 10 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh), it would take 5000 kWh. … It would take 60,000 hours to recognize any savings on power consumption alone, or almost seven years. That is far longer than the average life of a PC. … Green is rarely served either ecologically or economically by upgrading early," he writes.

Binstock has created and describes a broad four-part test to help decide whether a promising green IT product is worth the investment. "Anything failing these tests should be rejected if environmental concerns are the reason an upgrade or new product is being considered," he writes. "The products might be the right choice, but there should be no deception that they are right because they are green."

In next month's GreenTips column, Binstock will switch from broad ideas to very specific concerns and explain how to look for meaningful benchmarks and how to tell when and whether accreditations matter.

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