Looking to green your IT infrastructure? If Microsoft is to be believed, making the move to Windows 7 when it's released will go a long way toward doing that.

Rob Bernard, Microsoft's chief environmental strategist, claims that Windows 7 is greener than previous versions of Windows, with a variety of power-savings tools baked right into the operating system.

In an interview with eWeek, Bernard spelled out all the ways that Windows 7 will help save power. He pointed to tools for both users and IT administrators.

For a start, he says that in Windows 7, "the server and client interaction allows IT to run a power-efficiency diagnostics chart," which can be used by IT staff to devise the most energy-efficient settings for both PCs and servers. Then, using a variety of administrative tools such as Group Policy WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation), and a command-line utility, IT staff can build enterprise-wide policies, and administer and enforce them. Every PC in an enterprise could be set to its most efficient power use from a central location.

Bernard also says that Windows' power plans have been tweaked in Windows 7 to save more energy. For example, a plan can be set to reduce power use from monitors, which account for 40 percent of a PC's energy use.

In addition, Windows 7 can also automatically cut power to wireless network cards when it detects that the PC is connected to a network via wired Ethernet, or can place the wireless card into a low-power state.

Of course, there's only so far an operating system by itself can go to reduce power consumption. Big projects such as consolidation and virtualization in the data center ultimately make more of a difference, as does how efficient PC hardware is to begin with.

So while it appears to be true that Windows 7 can reduce power consumption, it's far from a magic bullet, as useful as it might be.