Shock revelations on "green" IT

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Bluescreen: Alex Kidman satirises the IT industry and crashes a few kernels along the way.

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It seems that no matter where you look, IT companies are falling over themselves to prove their “green” essentials. It’s the latest in a long line of what are basically marketing spends designed to entice consumers who might have had their doubts about how green IT could really be. Now, when you're talking about an industry that uses an awful lot of heavy metal and frighteningly named chemical compounds simply to make a laptop frame available in a shiny piano black finish, it's a bit of a stretch to call IT truly "green".

That's where a bit of PR spin comes in. Thanks to my contacts in the PR world -- many of whom are burnt out old journalists who followed the money trail to its logical conclusion and then essentially jumped on board -- as well as the emailing of certain sensitive photos involving PR people, household vegetables and a quantity of what I’m presuming was custard -- I was able to procure the "green" IT spin notes for a number of prominent IT companies. They've been written in a simplified style – these are, after all, simple CEO folk who don’t really “get” IT in a conventional sense,

For the generic Printer company CEO
Do say: “Our company is committed to low-impact printing solutions and reducing the amount of paper wastage in SOHO and home environments.”
Don’t say: “But that doesn’t stop us selling inkjet printers that are cheaper than the inks, leading consumers in huge mobs to dump the printers once they run out of ink.”

For Mr Jobs
Do say: “By reducing the number of CDs sold through the iTunes store, we’re having a positive environmental impact.”
Don’t say: “As long as you ignore all those sealed battery players ending up in landfill, of course.”

For Mr Trujillo
Do say: "We're committed to positive environmental impact across our entire range of leading-edge telecommunications products, lowering carbon footprints extensively and minimising unnecessary service duplication"
Don't say: "By "lowering carbon footprints" I mean "Laying off 90% of the service staff" and by "minimising duplication", I actually mean "Making sure our competitors can't get anywhere near our DSLAMs, using rottweilers if necessary."

For Mr Otellini
Do say: "We have a long history of commitment to the environment and energy efficiency is an important consideration in everything we do, from building transistors to designing microprocessors and running our factories."*
Don't say: "Of course, convincing you to replace a perfectly functional CPU with one that's 3% faster isn't all that green in the first place, but what the heck."

For Mr Schmidt or Brin
Do say: "We’re busy assembling our own internal research and development group and hiring a team of engineers and energy experts tasked with building 1 gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal. (That’s enough electricity to power a city the size of San Francisco.)"**
Don't say: "As long as nobody clicks to the fact that running a search engine used mainly for searching for porn, warez and the latest Paris Hilton news actually uses up a San-Francisco-load of power of course..."

For Mr Dell
Do say: "Through aggressive energy-efficiency programs, virtualization and power-management solutions, and industry-leading recycling, we are providing ways to protect the environment, reduce C02 output and reduce costs."***
Don't say: "By "reduce costs" we mean "if you want to use our 'Plant a tree' green option, you pay for it not us". And you have to be in the US or Europe -- isn't the rest of the planet basically just polluted water, landfill and call centre operatives by now anyway?"

For Mr Ballmer
Do say: "By becoming the default standard, we're eliminating waste in the highly competitive and 'innovation driven' operating system space"*****
Don't say: "Unless you count all those unsold hard plastic Ultimate Vista boxes, of course. Developers."

At the time of going to press, Kermit The Frog was unavailable for comment.

*Otellini actually said this.
** A genuine Google quote, albeit one without a specific byline. We even tried searching Google...
*** This one's a genuine Dell quote too, although not attributed to a specific spokesdrone.
****  Ballmer didn't say this -- but he probably will at some point.