Change Google's Background Color To Save Energy? 519
i_like_spam writes "Recent commentary at Nature Climate Change describes an on-going debate about the energy savings associated with the background colors used by high-traffic websites such as Google and the NYTimes. A back of the envelope calculation has suggested energy savings of 750 Megawatt hours per year if Google switched their background from white to black. In response, a new version of Google called Blackle was created. However, other calculations by the Wall Street Journal suggest minimal energy savings."
Oh, the irony.... (Score:5, Funny)
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But it is a good point, that site decided to use a white background, why? Is there some simple asthetic reason why a site would choose white or lighter colours over dark?
Or is it even simpler than that and no one has actually stopped to think about that.
Re:Oh, the irony.... (Score:4, Informative)
White background is more professional looking. It is also easier to read text in a large variety of colors.
Black background is more "cool" orientated - gaming sites, etc. It is easier on the eyes as long as the text color stands out and font size is large enough.
Black background in Porn too! (Score:5, Funny)
Back in black! (Score:3, Interesting)
Non-geeks remain horrified when they see how much green text on black I use in my personal desktop choices. It makes a dramatic difference at lowering eye strain though. Luckily, thanks to personal stylesheets, you can recolor just about an
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Re:Oh, the irony.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Oh, the irony.... (Score:5, Funny)
And judging from your heretical approach to this matter, I guess you may even use Emacs. Eew.
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So, at least, for ME.. well, I pretty much have to go with light grey on black.
That's generally fine on a terminal or X, but forget it on Windows. Too many applications with hard-coded colors that make the assumption of black on white to even consider it; I've tried. It's one of my major pet peeves with Windows.
Your milea
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Re:Oh, the irony.... (Score:5, Informative)
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Also, although I never used the old green screens much, it does give it a nice retro feel.
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Re:Oh, the irony.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Firstly, if you're using a CRT all day with a white background, then you have an electron beam lighting up phosphors and thus beaming light straight at your eyes all the time you're looking at it. It's like staring directly at a light bulb if you have to use the PC for any length of time.
Secondly, if you're using an LCD, it's likely backlit by a very bright bulb. "White" means opening the LCD molecules and letting that light through. So, in fact, you ARE staring at a light bulb when looking at a white LCD screen.
Computers Screens are not paper. They have light coming from them and hitting your eyes.
Paper products have light reflected off of them, usually at much lower intensity to start with.
So reading dark letters on light backgrounds is fine for paper.
But on a TV Screen, it's *provably* better for your eyes to have dark backgrounds and light lettering. If this hurts your eyes, use wider fonts instead of razor thin lettering.
WHY IT GOTTA BE BLACK!??!! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:WHY IT GOTTA BE BLACK!??!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: LCDs consume more power to create black (Score:5, Insightful)
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Exactly, this is the reason that my Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phone runs with a "white" theme I created (plus it increases readability in sunny locations).
However, there are new LCD's coming out with a matrix of LED's acting as the backlight. For those, running black would probably give you a net power saving. However, that would be offset by the cost of the things, they are not cheap.
Re: LCDs consume MORE power to create black (Score:5, Insightful)
The article references a DOE article from decades ago - and clearly before the predominance of LCDs - and another article full of comments about how the tests didn't bear this out on LCDs.
And if you REALLY want to save money on your CRTs, this is small potatoes compared to having a power strip for you monitor so you can cut all power to it at night - modern CRTs have a very substantial residual drain to keep the heater warm.
And you can set your machine to monitor-off earlier than sleeping - and since it wakes up from this fast, there aren't a lot of downsides. (This helps CRTs and LCDs...)
Finally, in many LCDs you can simply turn down the backlight - this is generally the largest power component in an LCD.
Re: LCDs consume more power to create black (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course it will. It takes power to twist the liquid crystals to make black, power that is not applied to make white. The backlighting isn't the issue. Even the original poster mentioned that the backlight is on constantly.
Re:WHY IT GOTTA BE BLACK!??!! (Score:4, Informative)
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Yeah, well. (Score:2)
double entendre (Score:5, Funny)
Once Google has gone Black, they'll never go back. That's what I hear, anyway.
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Can't we go to the middle ground and let Google go Asian? Asians are way hotter than Whites and Blacks.
Of course, I wouldn't know how to implement that, but damn, they're Google, they're going to find a way!
On the other hand, we're talking about energy savings and global warming, so perhaps having a "hotter homepage" is going to be counterproductive.
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DFC
Re:double entendre (Score:5, Funny)
Umm... "body bgcolor=#FFFF00" ?
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Black background? (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, You'd think changing your desktop background to solid black would make more of a difference then just changing google. I spent at most 10 minutes a day with the Google page open. And it's not that there's no other site that uses a white background. How much energy do flashing ads consume btw?
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I dunno, but a hell of a lot of those people wear glasses.
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You see... nerdy young boys with glasses didn't get socially accepted, so they started using computers. That's why many computer geeks wear glasses.
Re:Black background? (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, interesting read: http://www.writer2001.com/colwebcontrast.htm [writer2001.com]
Re:Black background? (Score:4, Interesting)
BUT, nowadays lots of things are multicoloured anyway and the text is often next to pictures as the article you linked mentions. Having pictures in a mostly black screen might be more "jarring".
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Only applicable for CRTs (Score:5, Insightful)
OLEDs? (Score:2)
I think it would reduce power in plasma screens too. But, those aren't used much for computers.
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Unless they make a hybrid with oled in the dark and e-ink in the light. Then a light background would waste electricity at night and strain your eyes more.
So have a dark background at night and a light background during the day like reading paper, that's it, web pages that adjust their display depending upon your surroundings.
Maybe I should have kept that to myself...
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Miniscule anyway I'd guess...
Re:Only applicable for CRTs (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Only applicable for CRTs (Score:4, Funny)
Mod me down and prove me right.
Re:Only applicable for CRTs (Score:5, Funny)
silly (Score:4, Insightful)
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Wow, the only actual "informative" comment so far, and only at a +4? Sad...
Playing Devil's Advocate, though, I had an idea - As you point out, Blackle will result in no real savings on LCD monitors; But the decreased light output does raise the temperature of the monitor, thus very slightly increasing your AC demands (in the summer). Okay, that one kinda goes out on a limb. For a more practical problem, while a nice l
Re:silly (Score:5, Informative)
If the LCD background is white, the light will eventually hit an object of your office and most of it will be absorbed. By absorbed, we mean converted to heat. The remaining light will be reflected to another object that will absorb again. And this continues until there is no more light.
Only light escaping your office through a window will prevent increase. Granted, because of reflection, there will be more light of the LCD that will eventually hit a window when using a white background than a black one, but for practical purposes, the quantity of energy lost will be very, very small. As a percentage of total energy lost to heat, the difference between using a white background versus a black background will be minuscule.
As a rule, no energy is created nor lost. And most forms of energy degrade as heat.
Re:silly (Score:5, Interesting)
So when comparing the contrast of LCD displays find out whether contrast ratio are measured the same way.
e.g. whether it's dynamic or static.
Whether it's the ratio of the brightest white vs the darkest black AT THE SAME time on about the same part of the screen (some can dim different parts of the screen to try to suit the dark bits of the picture),
or it's the ratio of the brightest white now vs darkest black 1 minute ago - no adjustments of brightness levels.
or even the ratio of the brightest white the monitor can display, vs the darkest black the monitor can display when on, with adjustments allowed (really cheating
Slashdotters, take notice (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Slashdotters, take notice (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slashdotters, take notice (Score:5, Funny)
It was conserving energy.
This is pretty much nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
Only if the LCD detects a dark screen, and adaptively lowers the backlight, will there be any energy saving.
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Ok, how about (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This is pretty much nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
No they don't. The majority of monitors sold surely, but monitors last for many years. Mine is over 10 years old, and has survived three or four PCs. There are a lot of old systems and even older monitors in use.
Re:This is pretty much nonsense (Score:5, Informative)
Now you know why many companies are throwing out / have thrown out long ago their CRTs and why it's dumb to pick them up for even less than 10 dollars: larger CRTs may be cheap to buy, but they eat into your wallet through 2-3 years. For fellow geeks who use their computer for 10 hours a day, that's some serious cash burned per year. And baby seals and pet whales killed, of course.
Most decent notebooks use 40W-60W total when under load, while older desktops routinely have PSUs that eat 30W in the *off*-state (computer powered down, but cable plugged in). A wattmeter ($15) and a calculator ($5) can do so much more for your wallet (and those pooooooooor baby seals) than switching to CF lamps and changing the background of that damn CRT to black.
Common energy hogs in the average home (in case you haven't taken care of some of these already)
- the fridge. There are models that use 140kwh per year available, yours probably uses 300 or more
- the freezer. same here, but when upgrading, consider a top-opening freezer. As cold air stays down, it's much more energy conserving than front-opening models
- lighting: use CFLs wherever convenient and LED replacements where there's not enough room for CFLs or switching cycles are important
But those are costing money. Here are some savings for free:
- the VCR, radio or TV: some waste 15-20W or more for doing nothing than blinking 12:00 - get a e-meter and a power strip with a simple on/off switch.
- washer and dryer: these appliances sometimes waste 20W or more when just being plugged in. Mine does and it's not a cheap one, either. That's right, 20W energy drain for nothing, no clock, no blinkenlights, nothing, just the plug in the socket. E-meter and then pull the plug when not using them, problem solved.
- the desktop PC. As mentioned above, most PSUs use 35W for nothing when the computer is supposedly in the off-state. The same for some peripherals, although they use 5-10W at most. Switchable power strip takes care of that - and have all peripherals plugged together so one switch really turns them all off: powered USB-hub, printer, scanner, speaker, screen and everyting else.
Total cost: 3 switchable power strips for $3 each and an e-meter ($15). Savings in the first year almost $100 or more, convenience and standard of living lost: zero.
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for some, that's clock, for some programmed stations.
batteries can be installed in some devices, but i'd guess those are even worse than a constant electricity draw.
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I bought one of those Kill-A-Watt meter things to help me make the same kind of calculations, so I figured I'd share my results. I only tested my PC workstation, though.
Main PC (Core 2 Duo E6600, 2GB RAM, two HDDs, 380W PSU)
Off: 4.0 watts
Boot
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While it's the case that new computer systems tend to be LCD, most existing computers out there are over a couple of years old and far more likely to be CRT.
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vast majority is probably true. Even a couple of years ago they were common, and as they break the ones on ancient computers are being replaced as well.
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The vast majority of your friends may run LCD monitors, but it's unlikely that LCD monitors have replaced even half the CRTs in the general user population. Techies are prone to overestimate the rate of adoption of new technology.
For that matter, they are still selling CRTs -- and they are cheaper to buy if not to operate -- than LCDs. Check the ads in your Sunday paper and look at what sort of monitor is on the low-end, loss-leader, offeri
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I hooked up a Kill-A-Watt meter to my monitor again, just now, to see for myself if dark colors save power on my monitor. In the past, I had noticed that my 19 inch CRT monitor's power usage varied from 64 - 84 Watts depending on background color. With the CRT monitor, the dark color used about 20 Watts less. In the sleep mode, when the screen was blank it only used a little over 1 Watt.
My new monitor is a 20-inch Dell 2007FP flat panel LCD monitor which I will test right now. With Firefox running unde
No savings on LCD:s (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No savings on LCD:s (Score:5, Interesting)
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Depends on the kind (Score:5, Interesting)
Regardless the energy used on the panels isn't much in comparison to the backlight. That's why companies toy with reflective displays (like the old Game Boy Advances). It does really well for battery life when there's not a backlight. That's what sucks the energy.
You could do it for your eyes... (Score:2)
Just try it by yourself, open in a tab the black google page advertised here and in another the normal google page, and cycle through them to see how the black background feels easier for the eyes...
Are we sure this helps? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think changing the colour to white changes the power draw significantly. It just means more of the flourescent tube light is passing through the screen.
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Not true at all (Score:5, Informative)
The LCD crystals in the screen act as tiny shutters, and can open or close to allow that light through, or keep it out. Although these shutters take a small amount of energy to open and close, it's insignificant compared to the amount of energy it takes to power the backlight.
A commenter in this thread [blogspot.com] commented that an Apple 17" display attached to a lab supply is measured as drawing 0.6W less when displaying a white screen than when displaying a black one.
CRT screens probably do draw less power when displaying a black screen, but on the whole they still draw considerably more power than an LCD under any circumstance. On the same note, CRT users may find that the white-on-black scheme is easier on their eyes -- I still have a CRT in my cube at work, and setting my editor to the white-on-black scheme is definitely more legible and less stressful on my eyes. (I still find it more legible on LCDs, although eye strain isn't an issue at all)
I don't get it... CowboyNeal should know better than this. Is he intentionally seeding flamebait?
How the hell would this work? (Score:5, Insightful)
To me this jsut sounds like more BS "Get more from less!" crap from people who probably aren't willing to make the simple changes that will actually, really make a difference.
Look, if you want to use less energy have your computer turn off monitor, disks, and suspend sooner, replace incandescent bulbs with CFLs (there are good full spectrum ones out there that give nice light), get a programmable thermostat and add some weatherstripping around doors and windows. It's simple, cheap and will do way more than crap like this.
LCDs (Score:4, Interesting)
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AFAIK, dark is the active state of the (sub)pixels, so a black screen would actually draw more power than a white one, not to mention that the filtering occurring on dark pixels means the panel heats up and breaks earlier.
The crackpot idea would indeed work if we were all using plasma screens which really draw a lot of power for lit areas.
Two points (Score:2)
2) This is obvious slashvertisment. He Slashdotted his Google custom search and he gets ~75% of the that the Google AdWords ads displayed next to the search results will earn.
Bring back the BLINK tag... (Score:5, Funny)
Then again, that extra money might get taken up in seizure meds.
OLED (Score:4, Insightful)
I prefer black backgrounds (Score:2)
Black backgrounds are easier to read - white backgrounds emit a lot of photons, whereas black backgrounds with
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Ah! I knew it! Those stinky photons, making my fonts so hard to read!! I'll read books in the dark from now on.
Agreed... I don't stare into lightbulbs normally.. (Score:2)
Actually, more precisely, I don't like staring into light bulbs much, and similarly, I don't like staring at screens that are outputting a similar quantity of lumens at me. IIRC, my old 19 inch CRT produced about as much light as a 100 watt light bulb, and it sat about two feet from my face for hours on end.
Yes, I did try messing with color schemes in Windows several years ago, but inevitably legibility issues show up with some random application or
Save energy by switching off your monitor (Score:5, Insightful)
White is preferable on TFTs (Score:2)
We know this is pure bullshit? Yes? We Do? (Score:2)
And that wastes so much energy
In other news ... Eliminating DRM Saves Energy (Score:2)
Ron
Feel the (Score:5, Funny)
Skywalker: pardon?!
Re:Feel the (Score:5, Funny)
A pittance (Score:2, Insightful)
This is *nonsense*... (Score:2)
Bet his blog ads are doing well, though.
This is nonsense.... (Score:2)
For old-fashiones CRTs, there might be a tiny bit of savings, but one look at the datasheed to the final amplifier for the erelctron beams shows that the total electron beam power is relatively small. Less then 10W. Switching the CRT to an LCD saves much, much more power.
Incidentially, your grapgics card does not care about what pixels i
My two cents (Score:2)
2. As someone else pointed out, will it make a difference on LCDs?
3. Is it more difficult to read lettering on a black screen? What about the confort issue?
4. 750 megawatt hours per year. Do you have any idea of what that is representative? Don't people tend to use about 10 megawatt hours per year for an individual household? That is 75
Backlight (Score:2)
I don't get it. The backlight on my LCD is always full on, even if the screen is black. So how does having a black screen save energy?
How many times that I have to type in this... (Score:2)
Some real figures (Score:5, Interesting)
Google.com: 18.5 watts
Blackle.com: 19.5 watts
Slashdot: 19 watts
so it would seem that using blackle is using about 5% more power.
userContent.css (Score:5, Informative)
@-moz-document url-prefix(http://google.com), url-prefix(http://www.google.com) {
body,
background: black !important;
}
body {
color: white !important;
}
body, td, div,
font-family: fixed-width !important;
}
a:link,
color: #3366cc !important;
}
a:visited,
span.a,
span.a:link {
color: #888 !important;
}
div, td {
color: white !important;
}
table.histTable td {
color: black !important;
}
div#navbar div,
table,
td,
div
{
background: black !important;
}
input[title=Search] {
background: black !important;
border: 1px solid #888 !important;
padding: 0 3px !important;
}
input[title='Google Search'] {
background: black !important;
border: 1px solid #888 !important;
padding: 0 3px !important;
margin-bottom: 20px !important;
}
img[src='/intl/en_ALL/images/logo.gif'] {
padding-top: 110px;
height: 0px !important;
overflow: hidden !important;
background: url(http://*************/google-black-276x110.jp
}
a#logo span {
background-image: url(http://*************/google-black-150x78.jpg) !important;
}
img[src='/images/google_sm.gif'] {
background-image: url(http://*************/google-black-150x78.jpg) !important;
padding-top: 78px;
height: 0px !important;
overflow: hidden !important;
}
div#gbarl {
display: none !important;
}
}
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Can you give examples of possible home pages that are darker than Blackle? They're the ones where you wouldn't save energy when swapping over to Blackle.
It's all about priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but setting blackle.com as your homepage earns blackle.com a whole lot of money from Google Custom Search.
Think about how much energy we would have saved if we all didn't read this spamvertising.
You're retarded (Score:2)
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