Want to know how wattage really applies to amps for PCs? Curious about the different kinds of loads and what "Active PFC" really means?

Surprisingly, hardware monitoring on Windows is much more complicated than it is on Linux. For one thing, there's no single extensible sensor engine like lm_sensors on Linux. Instead, there are a handful of monolithic engines for Windows that each have significant limitations. Worse is that the most extensible engine was abandoned a couple of years ago, while some of the more modern packages are lacking the basic functionality needed for hands-off management and reporting.

Hardware monitoring on Linux is actually pretty straightforward, but like most other things, even the simplest stuff can be complicated. Basically there are three "layers" of software involved, all of which are based around the lm_sensors software package.

Rack-mount Xeon systems can be hard to make cool and quiet.

32-bit Athlon processors need special software to make them consume less energy and shed less heat.

Netware administrators who are migrating networkwide management tasks to Novell Directory Services (NDS) now have another tool to ease the process. The beta version of American Power Conversion's (APC's) PowerChute Plus 4.3 for NetWare implements an NWADMIN snap-in that lets you monitor the state of any APC uninterruptible power supply (UPS) attached to a NetWare 4.x server.

Deltec's PowerRite Pro II family of uninterruptible power supplies (UPSes) helps alleviate the problem of lost power to your network by using a single UPS among multiple devices. The product also makes other network devices aware of the current power situation through distributed power-monitoring software.`