Time Is Energy

Local Cooling shout-out

I ran across a post over at terrapass about Local Cooling a tight software applet that makes saving energy fun. I think anything that helps us become more aware of the energy we use, and makes it easier to save energy are gold star products. Local Cooling gets double gold stars.

It is super easy to download (only 2.5 MB in size) and configure in a matter of seconds. Yes, one could use existing Microsquishy energy management tools to achieve the same energy savings, but this is way cooler! In particular, Local Cooling leaves a small post-it sized note on your desktop that tells you how many kwh/trees/barrels of oil equivalent you have cumulatively saved as a result of shutting down the monitor/drive/cpu at whatever interval you specify.

Talk about raising awareness! I've wondered how one even learns how much power my computer uses...Local Cooling has the answer, right down to the power used by the hard drive and the graphics card. 120 W total for my 2 year old Dell Dimension 4600. My goal will be to find out how much my next computer burns (and presumably minimize it) before I get it.

posted by Daniel @ 2:55 PM