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Dell’s headquarters switches to renewable energy

April 02, 2008 By: Brigid Gaffikin Category: General No Comments →

Dell is getting greener. The Round Rock, Texas, computing company said it now powers its entire 2.1 million square foot headquarters campus with energy generated from landfill and wind.

Dell gets 40% of its power from Houston-based Waste Management’s Austin Community Landfill gas-to-energy plant. The remaining 60% comes from existing wind farms and is provided by TXU Energy, according to Dell.

The move comes after Dell’s announcement in September that it planned to make company owned and leased sites “carbon neutral” in 2008 by both improving energy efficiency and tapping renewable energy resources.

The company said green power efforts at its central Texas campuses are already saving the computer maker $2 million annually in operating costs and cutting carbon dioxide equivalent emissions by nearly 20,000 tons per year.

Dell is also increasing green power on its Austin Parmer campus to 17% from 8% of total usage, it said Wednesday.

Dell joins other technology companies that are switching over to green energy. Apple Computer’s and Advanced Micro Devices’ respective Austin facilities both now get all their power from green sources, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s list online of companies in its “Green Power Partnership.”

Corporate orders, the virus of JPMorgan’s PC growth forecast

March 12, 2008 By: Greg Saulnier Category: General No Comments →

As the grip of the credit crunch tightens its hold on Wall Street and the rumor mill begins to turn with whispers of layoffs, there is one thing investors know for sure: there won’t be much of a need for new PCs these days. It was this line of thinking Wednesday that led JPMorgan to delete its 2008 PC unit growth forecast of 12.2% and insert a 9.7% estimate in its place.

“The weakness appears to be primarily related to the corporate sector,” the broker said. The business segment represented 43% of annual PC unit growth in 2007, and it became an increasingly important contributor in the second half of the year, JPMorgan said. “As a result, weakness here should clearly temper the overall market’s potential in the near term.”

JPMorgan, which also established a 2009 PC unit growth forecast of 12%, said it now appears that major original equipment manufacturers are seeing weakness after a slower start to the year for the clone vendors. The firm cited its Asia technology research, which yielded evidence of order cuts by Helwett-Packard, Dell, and to a lesser extent, Apple.

“So far the order revisions have been primarily with corporate product lines, but we remain concerned it is only a matter of time before the consumer starts to ease further,” JPMorgan analyst Bill Schope said.

Schope admitted that JPMorgan’s forecast assumes international regions will continue to support the industry as domestic growth slows, emphasizing that macro decoupling remains critical for the PC markets this year. He is still forecasting strong 2008 growth of 16.9% and 19.4% for the Asia-Pacific and rest-of-world regions, which more than counters his expectations for a 0.6% decline in the U.S. However, the firm was quick to point out that if it sees any signs of pressure on emerging market PC growth, its forecast could come “substantially” lower.

“Indeed, the business segment represented 44.7% of annual growth in the fourth quarter of 2007, which is up from 40.3% in the first quarter,” JPMorgan said. “This suggests the recent slowdown in corporate notebooks in Asia could present more of a problem for overall market growth than most anticipate.”

Not wanting to leave its clients without a glimmer of hope, the broker said order revisions are more than baked into current investor expectations for Hewlett-Packard, which remains its top pick in the industry. JPMorgan maintained its overweight rating on the stock and noted that it is the only technology name on its U.S. Focus List.