Upgrading to Windows 7 can save lots of watts.

A recent study by Mindteck (reported by Ars Technica), titled “Enabling Green Computing in the Enterprise”, showed that a Windows 7 rollout can save a company massive amounts of money due to its superior power management. The study showed that on a Pentium 4 computer, with an "out-of-box” configuration, Windows 7 can be up to 25% more efficient than Windows XP. Further, the study showed that even after all drivers have been updated, Windows 7 still trumped XP by an average of around 10% on a Pentium 4 machine.

System usage in Watts (W), lower is better. Data source: Mindteck.

As depicted on the above chart, more modern configurations displayed smaller, but still notable differences with an average power saving of around 3% (with optimized drivers). Regardless of how big the savings are for an organization, they’re still savings and as anyone that works in a large organization can testify – every cent counts.