PC Related Information

Green Rating

Green issues involving the procurement of IT equipment are becoming increasingly important and no less so with the Frameworks. Customers of the Frameworks can take the environmental impact of PCs into account by specifying it as part of their “Suitability for Intended Use” award criteria (Applying Award Criteria) when issuing Request for Quotes.

In order to highlight the issues to consider it is worth having a look at the different Green Certification Standards in use throughout the World. Two of the most widely referenced of these standards are Eco-label and EPEAT, both of which make reference to the Energy Star Standard.

BAPCo Benchmarks

Public procurement Directives require that in the award of public contracts, contracting authorities must avoid the use of restrictive technical specifications. The use of specs which include brand names like “Pentium 4 or equivalent” or “Intel or equivalent” or specifying processors with a clock rate above a certain speed is not permitted. Consequently, specifications should indicate that each PC must meet or exceed an overall performance rating using the BAPCo benchmark.

BAPCo benchmarks are used to establish the relative performance of PCs and Notebooks. BAPCo is a not-for-profit organsiation with membership consisting of virtually all of the major industry manufacturers (see www.BAPCo.com for details). The benchmarks use a suite of common applications (such as Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop, etc.) doing a number of common tasks so the PCs and Notebooks are evaluated under “real world” conditions.

Operating System Options

The current Standard Operating System for PCs and Notebook computers is Microsoft Windows 7 which means that unless you specify otherwise in your Request for Quote the Vendors will supply your PCs with that operating system and the appropriate hardware drivers. Microsoft Windows XP is also available on request

If you wish to buy products with an alternative operating system (Linux, Unix etc) or indeed without an operating system installed you can do so by running a mini-competition for a variant of the standard products (i.e. the specification is the same as a standard product, such as the Standard Office PC, for all other items except the operating system) or for a non-standard product, where your requirements are substantially different from the specifications offered by the standard ones.