turn off caps lock and save energy

[tom66]

as a bit of a laugh, i thought about turning off caps lock to save energy

so i worked it out, and it would actually save a surprising amount of energy

i wrote a web page for this theory: http://www.tgohome.com/capslock/

[ratdude747]

Re: turn off caps lock and save energy

seriously?

[dood]

Re: turn off caps lock and save energy

How much energy was wasted creating the website? What about the often-on-by-default numlock?

[tom66]

Re: turn off caps lock and save energy

It's not serious!

And yes. Far more time was wasted on that than necessary.

It's just an example of how something insignificant like a little LED can add up.

Numlock is probably worse, but lack of caps annoys -far- more people.

[Topcat]

Re: turn off caps lock and save energy

I thought it was funny....

It's just a British humor style slap in the face to all those 'going green' silly flakes...

[mariushm]

Re: turn off caps lock and save energy

most keyboards have a caps lock indicator led. on average (green, red and yellow leds) this consumes 65 mw (65 milliwatts) in operation..


more like <10 milliwatts... 2-3v @ 10mA or something

[tom66]

Re: turn off caps lock and save energy

most keyboards have a caps lock indicator led. on average (green, red and yellow leds) this consumes 65 mw (65 milliwatts) in operation..


more like <10 milliwatts... 2-3v @ 10mA or something

3V drop for a modern green LED, 20mA or so at maximum current, that's around 60mW. Plus, I've seen blue and white keyboard LEDs (my old laptop had them) which can use around 100mW. The LEDs on my thinkpad (all ten of them) are very nice and bright.

--

I am still in support of saving energy where I can in simple ways (e.g. turning off lights) but it reminds me of silly things like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE_XAo9IHug

and

http://www.blackle.com/

If anything saving energy simply saves money, which is nice.

[b700029]

Re: turn off caps lock and save energy

How about getting rid of all the crap running in the background that comes by default with prebuilt desktops or laptops. They're designed to slow down or halt the CPU when nothing is running to save power, but when you have 20+ processes periodically doing not-very-useful things, it can't. I did this to a friend's laptop and it went from getting 2.5hr of battery life to over 4. He also says the unit stays a lot cooler and the fan isn't running all the time. Nothing better than clearly obvious results.

[momaka]

Re: turn off caps lock and save energy

as a bit of a laugh, i thought about turning off caps lock to save energy

I always joke about that too, except I do it for the Num Lock key.

I am still in support of saving energy where I can in simple ways (e.g. turning off lights) but it reminds me of silly things like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE_XAo9IHug

That's the dumbest way to save energy I've ever seen. There's *far more* simpler, more efficient, and less annoying ways to save energy than this. Not to mention this doesn't even work on LCD screens (in fact, displaying dark pixels on an LCD screen usually uses more energy. The reason for this is because in order for the LCD to display a dark pixel at a certain location, it must turn on transistor(s) in the TFT where that pixel is in order to block light from the backlight for that pixel. So dark LCD screen = more energy waste).
Heck, the program that runs to put a black pixel on your screen probably uses a billion times more energy from the CPU cycles it puts on your CPU.
And after all of that energy saving, all I have to do is degauss my trusty old CRT once this year, and all of those energy savings will be gone (and just FYI, I degauss my CRT monitors regularly... sometimes even daily).

How about getting rid of all the crap running in the background that comes by default with prebuilt desktops or laptops. They're designed to slow down or halt the CPU when nothing is running to save power, but when you have 20+ processes periodically doing not-very-useful things, it can't. I did this to a friend's laptop and it went from getting 2.5hr of battery life to over 4. He also says the unit stays a lot cooler and the fan isn't running all the time. Nothing better than clearly obvious results.

+1

[shovenose]

Re: turn off caps lock and save energy

i never understood why manufacturers make these great, fast computers, but then bog it down with all this shit software...
Maybe so the person returns it and buys a more expensive one?

[ratdude747]

Re: turn off caps lock and save energy

i never understood why manufacturers make these great, fast computers, but then bog it down with all this shit software...
Maybe so the person returns it and buys a more expensive one?

they market it as a "feature" to increase sales.

also, the bloatware companies pay them to bundle their trialware...

[mariushm]

Re: turn off caps lock and save energy

They do it because the people making software programs pay them a few cents to a few dollars to include them inside Windows.

At some point in the future, they'll spam the user with upgrades or the antivirus definitions expire and they have to pay.. so if 2-3 out of 30-40 pay, they get their money's worth.

[shovenose]

Re: turn off caps lock and save energy

yeah I know they get paid; I mean why would they do such a thing
even Ubuntu, etc. has included bloatware, except that it's not paid and it's occassionally useful...

[severach]

Re: turn off caps lock and save energy

Are you looking for Maxwell's Demon?

To save money you need to advertise, and the cost of advertising will exceed the savings even if 100% comply.