With the launch of the ThinkPad T61 about two years ago, there was a big push for Energy Star 4.0 certification and lots of marketing around that. Now we are approaching on the launch of the Energy Star 5.0 standard and Lenovo is already bragging about that.

For those not in the know, Energy Star is a standard that encourages power efficient design in consumer products. Nearly everything that uses eletricity features an Energy Star guideline, from houses to laptops. If you have purchased a Lenovo PC recently with the Power Manager software installed, you will note the default profile is named Energy Star.

As we all know, a computer’s power usage can vary dramatically based on how it is being used. The Energy Star power profile seeks to control that usage, as you will notice it generally sets the screen brightness and processor performance to lower levels. It is unknown whether Lenovo tweaked the Power Manager profile further to apparently be Energy Star 5.0 certified already, but since the hardware is the same all machines are at least Energy Star 5.0 capable.

Outside of laptops, select models of Lenovo’s desktop and monitor lines are also Energy Star 5.0 certified. While not Energy Star related, the press release did contain this interesting tidbit:

Lenovo offers bulk packaging at no cost for customers with large-scale rollouts of laptop or desktop PCs such as universities and large enterprises. Bulk packaging can save up to more than four pounds of materials per PC, so a deployment of 5,000 ThinkCentre desktops, for example, could save nearly 22,000 pounds in materials, a significant waste reduction.

That’s pretty cool to me, and I will say that with the T400s I received there was very little excess packing material. I don’t recall what the material is made of, but there were only a couple of internal pieces and the (rather small) box itself. Kudos on packaging Lenovo.

Source: [Press Release]