I've been playing with the idea of building a PC application that measures a computer's idle time. The idea is to gently convince users to suspend or power-down their PCs when they are not being utilised. I strongly believe that if PCs are optimally powered down, then many users could cut energy consumption (and hence also save on energy bills). Powering down battery-powered laptops will also increase the longevity of batteries and thereby decrease toxic battery waste in landfills.
As an example of where the possible savings may be, above is a pie chart showing my own PC usage over the past few working days. As you can see, there is ample scope to power down/suspend PCs when they are idle.
If you want to contribute time to this project (coding/web page/translation into other languages/spreading the word), feel free to contact me. If not, then do suspend your PC every time you are away for more than a few minutes :-).
2 comments:
The following work might interest you then:
Somniloquy: Augmenting Network Interfaces to Reduce PC Energy Usage
http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/?id=79419
Thanks for the link to Somniloquy.It is an interesting concept - to allow low power operation for network I/O in an otherwise asleep PC.
I am more interested in educating people to get the PC into low power mode when they are not using it. Somehow folks prefer energy-hogging screen-savers rather than suspend modes!
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