Google have a good post on their official blog which looks at ways you can reduce your power consumption for your PC.

eXoid.com also have a good article on how to enable S3 standby for even greater power consumption. Stay green!

what they really need to do is a 'saving power while seeding torrents' guide... for all those people helping re-distribute linux.

what they really need to do is a 'saving power while seeding torrents' guide... for all those people helping re-distribute linux.

Mini ITX pc or one of those dsl routers thats meant to have a hdd and a torrent app built into it would be the best bet.

I stopped using my main rig for torrents cause its oc'ed and has all the power saving poop turned off.

I just built up sktA PC out of spare old parts to do my media on the TV and remote into that to queue up *cough* linux distros *cough*... It probably uses just as much power anyway being old and crappy though heh.

I use a P3 1.2ghz Toshiba laptop as my download box - screen is permanently closed (ie off). I just rdp to it if i need access, and I map a network drive to the downloads folder. I even get it to turn itself on when offpeak starts and turn itself off when offpeak stops.

Smallest, easiest to use and greenest download box ever.

I do have a p3 1gig sitting around somewhere... mmmmmmmmm ideas.. invading.. brain!

needs to be a lappy to be worthwhile for power saving
or perhaps a really, really minimal desktop pc

Well I also have a celeron 400 that would probably run of a 100w PSU and has almost no heat output. As long as you don't mind waiting an eon for it to boot up - although if its automated who cares :)

I still really want to figure out a way to measure how many watts my PC is drawing in various configurations. I guess a UPS would do this?

yeah, i had a celeron 533 as my last download box - micro atx board and case, 256mb sdram, 20gb hdd, running win2k iirc, pissy little 125w psu and i even had a passive cooler on the cpu. it was pretty good, just a little on the slow side.

just forwarding something i got in an email at uq

The claimed power savings are plausible for old-fashioned CRT monitors,
but are significantly smaller (if any saving at all) for LCD monitors,
which ALWAYS have the backlight running, regardless of whether they are
showing black, white or anything else. The backlight is by far the
biggest power consumer in an LCD display.

"Blackle" has been independently tested for four cathode ray tube (CRT)
monitors and four liquid crystal display (LCD) monitors, and it was
found that the power saving of the CRT monitors was less than that
claimed by Blackle, while the LCD monitors tested showed no power
saving, or even a slight increase:
http://techlogg.com/content/view/341/31

All of our LCD monitor tests showed that Blackle actually causes a rise
in monitor power consumption over the standard white Google search
engine page. The results also match what is known about LCD design -
that the display has to block the passage of light from the backlight
getting through to the front of the screen and in order to do that, more
power is required.

On average, our four LCD monitors saw a rise of 0.35W by using Blackle
instead of Google.

Therefore, you would achieve far more by turning your monitor off whenever
you are
away from your computer. (Why not turn your computer off while you are
at it - and remember to turn off the lights when you walk out of the
room, and ...)

I still really want to figure out a way to measure how many watts my PC is drawing in various configurations. I guess a UPS would do this?

The office green dude had some sort of a meter gadget that sat between the socket and the power cord and gave a nice draw reading. Was kind of cool, and also amazing how much more power CRT monitors chug cf. LCD.

I think he borrowed it from the library of all places?

maybe you could offset your carbons by not breathing while your pc is on.

hmmm, that probably wont work for me

im usually panting when im at my pc

i leave my pc's on 24/7 & my power bill is pretty small. your power bill is all ya have to worry about anyways... using less ac power isn't a 'greener' option coz those power stations churn away regardless of your insignificantly reduced demand.

just make up with the atmosphere by eating lots of really charred steak... that's carbon that isn't gonna get back into the atmosphere in a hurry :D

using less ac power isn't a 'greener' option coz those power stations churn away regardless of your insignificantly reduced demand.

who were you talking to when you said 'your'? a single person? strictly the readers of qgl? or all people? wouldn't it depend on how much energy conversion was required by the population as to how much churning away those power stations do?

i leave my pc's on 24/7 & my power bill is pretty small. your power bill is all ya have to worry about anyways... using less ac power isn't a 'greener' option coz those power stations churn away regardless of your insignificantly reduced demand.

No, generation matches demand exactly, so using less AC is definitely 'greener'.

nour

Trog,
I'm guessing you want something like;
http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/review/kill_a_watt_electric_usage_monitor_review
?

But with Australian plugs... or a few adapters :p

who were you talking to when you said 'your'? a single person? strictly the readers of qgl? or all people? wouldn't it depend on how much energy conversion was required by the population as to how much churning away those power stations do?

for the purposes of my statement any variation of 'your' is true.

No, generation matches demand exactly, so using less AC is definitely 'greener'.

exactly!@#!! so they go 'bit less coal in the genny tonight lads... trog's turned his pc off!' ;p

exactly!@#!! so they go 'bit less coal in the genny tonight lads... trog's turned his pc off!' ;p

Thinking "oh, one person won't make any difference" is just a bulls*** excuse to be lazy though. Big things are made of little things!

for the purposes of my statement any variation of 'your' is true.

how so? I'm guessing you know something about power stations that I don't (wouldn't be hard!) - I'd have thought they have the ability to adjust the amount of energy they convert, and would be varying this based on demand - not just cranking full steam ahead since they began operation?

Thinking "oh, one person won't make any difference" is just a bulls*** excuse to be lazy though. Big things are made of little things!

That's all well and good, but I'm just one person. that's not going to make a noticeable difference...

Not running video cards which need 300 watts by themselves is a good start.
nVidia and ATI aren't really helping with the power issues in recent years. "Hm, we need more processing power, can we do this inside the current conditions? f*** no. More power!"

I charge my Prius via usb...

Thinking "oh, one person won't make any difference" is just a bulls*** excuse to be lazy though. Big things are made of little things!

yep. & what i like about being lazy is how easy it is... just sitting here, rocking back n forth, being lazy :D

how so? I'm guessing you know something about power stations that I don't (wouldn't be hard!) - I'd have thought they have the ability to adjust the amount of energy they convert, and would be varying this based on demand - not just cranking full steam ahead since they began operation?

i dunno that much about power stations either... my statement has more to do with the insignificance of household consumer demand (one or many) in comparison to industry demand with regard to the actual ammount of feul used.

it's just a bit simple to say that using less (in the order of a few watts) ac power is helping the enviroment. especially everytime i see someone say that... i use more power! ;p

"Hm, we need more processing power, can we do this inside the current conditions? f*** no. More power!"

http://members.iinet.net.au/~sartoph/imgz/Tim-mehr.jpg

I dunno if it's simple, I'd say it's the opposite actually. how much is a few? how much is a few + a few + a few, multiplied a few times over and over and over with a cherry on top? lot of people on this earth, doesn't take much for a few-per-person to amount to a lot.

will burning less coal 'help'? who knows for sure? maybe a few people, but probably not most of us. but it's pretty likely yeah? what do you hope to achieve by discouraging that kind of thinking?

Thinking "oh, one person won't make any difference" is just a bulls*** excuse to be lazy though. Big things are made of little things!

Your attitude is exactly the one that sells Priuses by the f***load. Doing something meaningless and totally insignificant in the scheme of things and feeling great about it.

trog's attitude definitely isn't one that makes prius sales. you're so busy hating on a perceived ideology that irks you, that you aren't being rational

Thinking "oh, one person won't make any difference" is just a bulls*** excuse to be lazy though. Big things are made of little things!

..

That's all well and good, but I'm just one person. that's not going to make a noticeable difference...

What you consume in power alone will make very little difference to the national power usage.
Your thoughts and hence actions, however, will impact on those around you. It may make them feel a little like they too shouldn't conserve power in any way they can. If 10 people thinking like this surround 1 person thinking that they should, it is easy to imagine that person taking on the thoughts and actions of those around them. These would then bounce back to you and others around them, making you feel even less inclined to save power.

Perhaps if you also shifted your thoughts and actions to save power, you might help reach a critical point where suddenly the small thoughts and actions of many people cascade into the large thoughts and actions of a nation.

/end hippy rant.

I am channelling my thoughts into huggles for demon and nf right now

Why not turn your computer off while you are
at it

I wonder

lol global warming caused by humans

Your attitude is exactly the one that sells Priuses by the f***load. Doing something meaningless and totally insignificant in the scheme of things and feeling great about it.

What are you, some sort of weirdo? If I turn my lights off when I leave my unit, I'm using electricity. If everyone does it, then we're using a lot less electricity.

I don't know how anyone can even get out of bed with that attitude. "Why should I bother?" seems to be pretty much exactly what's wrong with most of the planet

Here Trog try this :

http://www.localcooling.com/

I've been using it for about a yr now... not bad.

The whole 'save a tree' meter is bit gay though.

I still really want to figure out a way to measure how many watts my PC is drawing in various configurations.

http://www.todae.com.au/comersus2/store/comersus_viewItem.asp?idProduct=636

as part of solvering the qld water problems i am personally gonna take a leak in the the dam every day i go past it... sure it's not a lot of water but if everyone did it!?!?! ;p

i had a chat to a mate of my old man last night, he used to be a foreman at the swannbank power station. he confirmed what i thought that the generators run to meet an expected demand & if the demand drops slightly the generator simply runs at a decreased efficiency... the same amount of feul is used. if the demand rises above what is expected 'peak power' generators are brought online. so in fact, the best way to get the most 'value' out of burning the coal is to have the generator run at about 80-90% load where it is at it's highest efficency. so as the coal is already going to get burnt, you want to get the most useable energy out of it & maximise the benefit of pumping the nasty carbons in to the atmosphere. this means hitting right on about 80-90% of expected demand... so plz, save a tree, leave your pc on 24/7. :D

so who do I believe - orbitor or you?! I'd like to make a vehicle purchase today

S3 standby

I hope this doesn't mean I need to get an S3?!

heh check this out - pico ITX motherboard. Tiny!

he confirmed what i thought that the generators run to meet an expected demand & if the demand drops slightly the generator simply runs at a decreased efficiency

Right, but the whole point of things like this is to get the demand to drop significantly. Google are talking about "reducing total power consumption by more than 50% for all computers by 2010".

mantrap you would do well to get an S3

surely there is some folding @ home systems that i can run 24/7 that will offset tha carbon my pc makes.