Dinner last night with some very smart Gartner analysts who talked about the relative watt drain of different screen savers. Seriously, these guys are quantifying the power consumption of 3-D Pipes and Starfield. Average burden is 3 watts …..
They also slammed the claim stated last week at the CMO Summit that an unnamed Wall Street financial institution consumes as much electricity as the entire state of Connecticut — total albino alligator. They did say a rack in a data center does consume as much juice as three typical households.
Cool stuff ….
You think a data center is bad? Jay Leno spent almost half a million dollars retrofitting his 17,000 sq-ft garage to be more energy friendly. With most of that cost invested in solar panels and a small amount in a wind turbine, on a sunny day he can generate enough power for 40 residential homes. Yet, that power only meets 40% of his power consumption on average. WTF does he do there that uses enough power for nearly 100 homes…
Back on topic, I don’t use screensavers. Given my main system is a notebook, if the screen is on – it is drawing power and reducing my runtime. Even when the system is docked, I have my notebook LCD & external LCD set on idle timers. I also have the CPU set to Adaptive, so it only clocks up when needed.
T/R/X61 systems also have really advanced power saving options built into ThinkVantage Power Manager, due in part to our commitment to Energy Star 4.0.