Testing Suggests Digital Signage Players On ChromeOS 35% More Energy-Efficient Than Same Devices Running Windows
December 3, 2024 by Dave Haynes
Sixteen:Nine’s German-language content partners invidis have an interesting story up discussing the merits of the ChromeOS operating system for use in digital signage, covering some familiar ground like cloud updating and security, but also getting into a less discussed area – energy consumption.
The managing director of the Munich-based value-added distributor Concept International, Mike Finckh, suggests ChromeOS is “superior to other operating systems in terms of performance, power consumption, failure tolerance and data security.”
“For example, if we run identical digital signage players with identical content in parallel, we measure around 35 percent less power consumption compared to Windows,” says Finckh. A couple of years ago, Google itself touted an average of power reduction of 19 percent.
On a singular basis, reducing energy usage by more than a third might not seem or be all that meaningful, but when there are dozens or 100s of endpoint devices, it ads up.
The invidis story also gets into Finckh’s experience and perspective on ChromeOS, including re-purposing aging Windows devices, subscription costs versus value, and industry skepticism about ChromeOS, which he says somewhat mirrors the experience of using Android as an OS – which a decade ago was regarded in a lot of IT circles as dodgy but is now widely accepted and used for things like point of sales systems and simple industrial applications.
ChromeOS is super mature in education market. ChromeOS very little in point of sales as it lacks robust “generally available” external device interfaces. Mostly socket based. Android isn’t much different in that regard and it is slated to absorb ChromeOS. Huge in education market. Finally not sure how much power savings. True instead of 20-60W you are looking more at 30W, depending on CPU. But that is connected to 10 different high bright 49″ menu boards? Each one of those running 150W?