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."
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?
Backle is not a google company!!! (Score:0, Informative)
OrgName: GoDaddy.com, Inc.
OrgID: GODAD
Address: 14455 N Hayden Road
Address: Suite 226
City: Scottsdale
StateProv: AZ
PostalCode: 85260
Country: US
$ whois www.google.com
OrgName: Google Inc.
OrgID: GOGL
Address: 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
City: Mountain View
StateProv: CA
PostalCode: 94043
Country: US
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.
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.
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:Oh, the irony.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Oh, the irony.... (Score:5, Informative)
I like Maddox's reason... (Score:2, Informative)
Re: LCDs consume more power to create black (Score:3, Informative)
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:This is pretty much nonsense (Score:3, Informative)
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 under Linux, I have Blackle.com open in one tab and Google.com open in another tab. Looking at the Kill-A-Watt meter, I get 35 Watts for Blackle.com and 37 Watts for Google.com. So using a dark color on my 20-inch Dell 2007FP flat panel monitor only saves 2 Watts. In the sleep mode, when the monitor goes blank, it only uses 1 Watt.
Oddly enough the power consumption on both my monitor and the rest of the computer varies from day to day by about 3 Watts. I am not sure if that is due to variations in room temperature or the daily variations in the voltage of the electricity that I get from the power company or what. At the moment the voltage here is 124.5 volts, sometimes it has been about 118 volts. The power company has come out twice, in the last decade or so, to adjusted the transformer on the nearby power pole to raise or lower the voltage.
So anyway, Blackle.com only saved 2 Watts on my 20-inch LCD flat panel monitor, which is not very much compared the the 100 Watt light bulb that is on in a nearby lamp. Just in case you had to ask, according to the Kill-A-Watt meter, the 100 Watt light bulb in one of the lamps is using 100 Watts and the 100 Watt light bulb in the other lamp is using 94 Watts. Switching to a more efficient type of light bulb would help much more than using Blackle.com.
Re:Only applicable for CRTs (Score:5, Informative)
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;
}
}
Re:Oh, the irony.... (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, there is. You can set up Firefox's userContent.css on a per-site basis. See for example my post on using userContent.css to make Google black here [slashdot.org].
Of course if you don't want to go through the hassle of writing css for nested tables, you can always just launch xterm -bg black -fg white and fire up lynx/links/w3m.
Re:WHY IT GOTTA BE BLACK!??!! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Oh, the irony.... (Score:2, Informative)
"Not anymore hipocritical than than the enviromentalist's darling Al Gore living in a house that sucks enough energy..."
Um, that was an old mansion which is undergoing renovation and energy efficiency fixes. This work was delayed by the need to get local ordinances brought up to date regarding solar panel retrofits. It also has numerous offices in it, so calling it a "house" is misleading.
But don't let any of that stop you...
Re:Oh, the irony.... (Score:1, Informative)