SPCR

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

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?

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.

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?

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?