Green Futures PC Guide

Ecological issues around computing. This is an experimental forum.

Moderators: Ralf Hutter, Lawrence Lee

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pod03
Posts: 77
Joined: Mon Mar 24, 2003 12:36 pm
Location: UK

Green Futures PC Guide

Post by pod03 » Fri Mar 23, 2007 11:26 am

The following looks to have some useful bits and bobs:
http://62.169.138.193/features/bestgree ... e2824.aspx

padmewan
Posts: 106
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Location: Cambridge, MA
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Post by padmewan » Mon Mar 26, 2007 7:35 pm

Seems like a fun, if somewhat catchall/eclectic of a compilation.

On that list, the wooden PC bothers me the most. Seems that if all of us gave a little less crap about what our cases looked like, we could recycle a hella lot of existing ATX cases, recouping their manufacturing costs and eliminating new energy investments.

The local cooling link seems useful, but can someone explain to me how an app running on your computer can tell you how much power you're really consuming?

Palindroman
Posts: 247
Joined: Fri Oct 20, 2006 1:00 am

Post by Palindroman » Thu Mar 29, 2007 4:00 am

padmewan wrote:
The local cooling link seems useful, but can someone explain to me how an app running on your computer can tell you how much power you're really consuming?
It checks all your hardware and then adds up the estimated power consumption of each component. It isn't very accurate, because it can't possibly measure the exact power consumption of these components. It just takes figures from a list and adds these up. These figures aren't accurate either. For instance, it takes the TDP from CPU's, but TDP is a maximum power consumption. So my system is said to be using 130 watts, whereas it consumes 85 watts.

But never mind, if it makes people more conscious then I'm all for it.

breunor
Posts: 96
Joined: Tue Jul 12, 2005 10:18 am

Post by breunor » Fri Apr 20, 2007 5:43 am

The link for the local cooling app is http://www.localcooling.com/info/ and it appears it can adjust your power saving modes to minimize power use as well. The only issue I see with that is powering down your hard drive, if not set correctly wouldn't repeated power ups/downs put excess wear on the drive?

pfft
Posts: 33
Joined: Mon May 10, 2004 3:26 am

Post by pfft » Wed May 02, 2007 1:52 pm

At least someone is making suggestions.

I disagree with the laptop proposal. A desktop can be in the same range of electrical use as a laptop but allow greater flexibility. The flexibility can allow for things like later reuse, purposeful purchases of components to encourage environmental manufacturing, and less wasteful repair and upgrade paths.

Does anyone convert a laptop to a firewall/router or file server?

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