Blackle
Apparently this website stemmed from this blog post, hypothesizing on the potential energy savings of using a non white screen on your ‘puter.
here’s a fuller exploration of the science and the commerce here.
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17 Responses to “Blackle”
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July 25th, 2007 at 9:33 am
[a couple of topics Frog… The “Smart Growth” guy here now…. and Didymo…. (if youve got biomass some other organism will want it… Too bad for boats and irrigation tho]
July 25th, 2007 at 11:41 am
The best way to save power is to turn the computer off at the wall when you are not using it. If this is not possible, turn the monitor off at the wall, or at the very least, the switch on the monitor. You can also look at putting the monitor into sleep or energy saving mode.
Out of interest, I looked up the documentation for my work LCD monitor (NEC 1760BX - a 17″ monitor):
Normal operation: Approx. 38 W
Energy saving mode (sleep): Less than 2 W
Off mode (switch on monitor): Less than 1W
Turned off at the wall: 0 W
2W might not seem a lot, but if you leave your monitor in energy saving mode 24 hours a day for a whole year, it will use 17.5 kW.h. This is enough to power a 2 kW heater for almost 9 hours, quite a lot of electircity. Leaving the monitor on in normal mode all the time (for example with a screen saver running) will use a staggering 332 kW.h per year (about $60-$70 of electricity at 20c/kW.h).
July 25th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
As got pointed out in a couple of places, white on black only saves power with a CRT. With an LCD, it possibly uses a miniscule amount _more_ power.
The best approach of course is to just turn things off when not using them.
July 25th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
surely this idea is on a par with turning off the Num Lock key so that the little light on the keyboard is not lit!!
Much more important surely is the trend for websites to declare themselves carbon neutral by choosing hosting providers that promise to only use green electricity or via carbon offsetting.
People can then choose whether to get their daily fix of news from a carbon neutral website or a climate changing website.
For example:
http://www.wikihow.com/wikiHow:Carbon-Neutral
http://www.hotgecko.net/
July 25th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
You could also argue that by making the page slightly more difficult to read you are increasing the time that people need to spend online to be able to accomplish their task, therefore you are increasing the total electricity used because the computer is on for slightly longer.
July 25th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
White on black sucketh. Light 3 pixels instead of one per color.
Sharper is Green on black. This is also better because the eye is more sensivitive to green…
Having cut my teeth on computers before color screens were even affordable in EGA format I also like green on black because I find it comforting. Like being at home.
respectfully
BJ
July 25th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Roy said “The best approach of course is to just turn things off when not using them.”
Nope, in business the best approach is not to encourage workers to touch dangerous things like off buttons on computers. Or to confuse them with screens that turn off by themselves.
July 25th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
Kevyn: it all depends on what the computer is used for. Switching off a desktop workstation is unlikely to cause any problems, even if the user does not shut down properly (though switching off computers without shutting down properly is definitely not recommended). If all staff switch off their computers when they go home, the power savings will be significant.
On the other hand, I totally agree with you when it comes to machines which are meant to be on all the time, such as servers. In many cases, these are in locked rooms anyhow.
Having said that, I worked in a place where one of the shift workers called out one of the IT staff in the middle of the night, because a computer was not working. It turned out the machine was simply unplugged from the wall.
July 26th, 2007 at 1:49 am
samiuela, What you say is 100% correct. Sadly what I said is common practice in a great many businesses. I suspect it is perpetrated by technophobic senior managers.
Before we had screen savers (and windows 3.1 and colour screens) it was standard practice to turn PC monitors off to prevent image burn-in. And to turn computers off when they weren’t being used to make them last longer. Mind you it only took a few seconds to boot a PC with a dos floppy, rather than the minutes it takes with the obese operating system we have now. The hibernate mode on my laptop should be standard on all PCs, it might cure the technophobic resistance to using the power saving features built into every modern PC.
July 26th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
At work I use a Mac G5. I think these are real energy hogs (interestingly, the manual which came with the machine does not list its power consumption … maybe because it is so horrible). I often put the machine into sleep mode when I go and get a cup of tea, and always either sleep the machine or turn it off when I go home.
I also run a server using a Pentium IV machine, which also uses a lot of energy. Because I can not put this machine to sleep, I have turned on APM so that the CPU gets throttled down to 360 MHz (from 3000 MHz) when it is more than 30% idle. I’m not sure how much electricity this saves, but I’ve notice the CPU temperature drops by about 10 degrees Celsius or more when it is
throttled back.
July 26th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Since I haven’t bought a new CPU in 6 years I don’t have much that runs that hot, but I have several systems and I am looking for a new one… most likely candidate is a low power AMD dual-core. I just can’t bring myself to buy another intel.
respectfully
BJ
July 26th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
I don’t know what your requirements are, but if you are building your own machine, perhaps you could put in a CPU designed for laptops? These use a lot less power, and aren’t that much slower.
I have been tempted from time to time to run my server using a Soekris or Wrap box, but these are a little bit underpowered for what I want (though they would make perfectly fine routers and firewalls, and the Wrap boxes claim to only use about 5W from memory).
July 26th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
samiuela
Don’t worry ’bout it. I have to get it past the financial committee first, and I am really tough on myself when I start to spend money on hardware. I have 7 separate boxes right now, of which 3 are being rehabilitated and one is being retired. Several of them are cast-offs that other people were ditching. I have e-waste I can’t bring myself to toss. A good working EGA monitor for instance. I have a good DOS based game to go with it and the MB and the memory and CPU… just have to set it all up so my kids can play “Starflight” and “Starflight2″ which are definitively NOT shooters and can teach a couple of useful behaviours… and given the machines involved, patience as well
… also have an original IBM-PC version (350 point) of Adventure. Now you play it online if you want.
http://www.wesleyholland.com/misc/adventure/adventure.html
Which reminds me of this government sometimes “You are in a maze of twisty passages all alike”
respectfully
BJ
ciao
BJ
July 26th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
For the fellow computer nerds amoung us. Check this out.
http://www.opensparc.net/about.html
July 26th, 2007 at 11:21 pm
SleepyTreehugger, thats an interesting link. I’m regretting having put a Pentium IV in my box. With hindsight I would have gone for a slower chip with lower power consumption.
Fortunately, when I built the machine, I put a cheap motherboard in, and spent most of my money on a good quality power supply, hard drives etc. The reasoning being that its cheaper to upgrade the motherboard and CPU, whilst keeping all the other components.
August 4th, 2007 at 12:12 am
I find the other version http://www.Darkoogle.com is more easier to read since they uses green text just like the old days. Green text are more easy for our eyes and reduce eye strain.
August 20th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
There are around 18 different versions of black google online. The best one Ive found is http://www.cleanblack.com. Cleanblack is the only version that allows you to change the text colors of the google search results. Try it yourself by going to http://www.cleanblack.com/theme/