(Credit:
CNET)
With more and more people watching movies on their wide-screen Macs and Apple TV, it's no secret the computer is starting to move in on traditional DVD, Blu-ray, and other video player territory. If you have a laptop and the right cords, you can even plug your computer into your big-screen TV and enjoy all the glory of the new standalone Hulu for Mac. But while your Mac is great for watching movies, your Mac's sleep feature to save energy has a nasty way of making your screen go dark right in the middle of the show. To keep this from happening, you can go into the preference pane before starting a movie, select Energy Saver, then slide the dial to Never sleep. I admit this isn't a terribly hard process, but I found a download that makes it even easier.
The settings window, though fairly sparse, offers all the settings you need.
(Credit: CNET)Caffeine is a free download that adds a simple icon on the right side of your menubar. When you click it, Caffeine prevents your Mac from going to sleep while you watch your movie. When your movie is over, simply click it again to return to your normal sleep settings. You also can Command-click the icon to bring up settings to set how long you want Caffeine to keep your Mac awake--anywhere from 5 minutes to indefinitely, but it also has 2-hour and 5-hour options for perfect movie-viewing time.
We can't keep you from getting pinched if you've neglected to deck yourself in verdant hues this St. Patrick's Day, but we can help keep you in the spirit of green with these energy-saving apps. Of course, we'd never tease you so mercilessly with a collection of "green apps" without also pointing out our jolly supply of leprechaun and other St. Patrick's Day screensavers. Without further ado, make merry with these eco-minded downloads.
Edison shows how much energy and cash you save by suspending systems sooner.
(Credit: CNET)Edison for XP and Windows Vista is the newest one-stop app for monitoring how much energy and money you save when you tighten up your computer's sleep and shutdown schedules. A slider lets you decide after how many minutes you want to shut down your computer's display and hard drive during the peak work day. You can program differing criteria for off hours. Manual customization is also possible if you need to ease into greener computing.
How many extra pages do you generally recycle after printing a page from a Web site? We all agree, it's better for the environment if you can avoid inking up those unwanted extras in the first place. The free GreenPrint World and premium GreenPrint Home Premium can help.
Vista users wishing to shrink their energy footprint a size can get started with Vista Battery Saver, a freeware app that disables certain Vista features, particularly when your power reserves dip below a predefined threshold. This app is especially useful for owners of Vista laptops who are running on limited batteries.
A perpetually running computer is an energy-dumping computer. Luckily, even if you're too lazy to shut your computer down yourself, freeware like Auto Shutdown can schedule shutdowns for you. Not only that, this app gives you five modes for taking your rig offline, and lets you program hot key combinations to launch the sleep or "off" mode of your choice without opening the program's interface.
Schedule hibernation and shutdowns and assign actions a hot key shortcut.
(Credit: CNET)If you've got Google Desktop, Google's Energy-saving gadget will monitor your power savings from your Google Desktop dashboard. You'll have to make some concessions, of course, like letting your computer hibernate or shut down after shorter intervals of idleness, but seeing that you spared enough energy to power a jumbotron at a baseball game may cause you to rethink just how valuable 24-7 access to the computer is to you.
Technician geeks get another take on computer energy usage in SpeedFan, a fast and free, but complex program for accessing fan speeds, temperature, and voltage in PCs with hardware monitor chips. This application won't appeal to, or even make sense, to most average users, but the data-rich app will be a jackpot for some.
LocalCooling floats on your desktop in a tiny box. This expanded view displays more details.
(Credit: CNET)If you tend to zone out and leave your computer on to suck energy needlessly, Local Cooling (download it from CNET Download.com) helps you tell your Windows XP beast when to rest, giving the electric company a break, too. I've been using this free download on two PCs for a couple of weeks. It lets you time automatic snoozes or shutdowns for precise periods of neglect (also see Earth2Tech). Use Vista? Check out this battery saver.
By bringing hidden details about consumption to the surface, Local Cooling encourages you to relax your energy usage with little effort. Otherwise those controls are buried pretty deeply within Windows or Mac system folders. But Local Cooling sits on your desktop, calm and translucent, showing the true power hunger of your CPU, monitor, and graphics card.
Then it quietly adds up how many kilowatt hours and trees you might be saving. By last count, I've spared 0.362 of our leafy friends (is that like saving the bark or a pile of branches?). Since using Local Cooling, I haven't noticed my CPU or monitor napping any more than they already were before, although that could be because I tend to turn off the screen when I take a break.
Power-saving controls can be as lax or strict as you like.
(Credit: CNET)You can log in to your Local Cooling account from any browser to see results from your stable of machines, and check out what other users are saving. The widget's maker, Uniblue Labs, calculates that using 15 computers leads to about as many globe-warming carbon emissions as one car on the road.
Green social networks for cleaning up your carbon footprint include Make Me Sustainable (more here) and Yahoo Green (more here). In addition to providing smart, power-saving tools for socializing, computing, and even hosting your Web site lately, people are dreaming up computer hardware that's green out of the box. The novel Zonbu rental PC is energy-efficient, while this regular-looking Dell notebook is the first to win an EPEAT gold rating for sustainable design.
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Microsoft)
Whether you want to use Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system or not, you're almost certainly going to get it if you buy a new Windows laptop. While reviews of Vista have been mixed, one thing is certain: some of Vista's features, such as the Aero interface and Windows Sidebar, can suck the life out of a laptop battery in no time. In particular, the Aero Glass interface has shown to be a major energy drain.
Luckily for new Vista laptop users, open-source software from Tamir Khason can help considerably. Titled Vista Battery Saver, the little 900K application determines whether you're using battery power and how much is left, then it turns the Aero user interface and the Windows Sidebar off or on, depending on your settings.
You can select specific power-plan management settings for whenever you are using an AC source or battery power, and specify that Vista Battery Saver send you an alert every time it makes a change to the Windows Sidebar or Aero interface. Simple percentage sliders let you determine what battery-power limit will switch off Aero and the Windows Sidebar, and a check box at the bottom specifies whether Vista Battery Saver should start when Windows does.
The Vista Battery Saver demonstrates the power of community development once again. Leave it to an independent programmer to come up with an elegant, efficient, and open-source solution to one of the most glaring problems in Microsoft's new operating system.
Electrocity
(Credit: CNET Networks)Like a mini-version of SimCity, the Flash-based Web game Electrocity lets you develop your own metropolis from the ground up. Rather than existing solely as a entertaining Web diversion, however, Electrocity has a hidden agenda.
The sponsor of the game, Genesis Energy, is an energy provider and retailer in New Zealand. Electrocity was developed to increase public awareness about energy usage, its cost, and its effect on the environment.
Electrocity is a fairly simple, turn-based strategy game. You get 150 turns to create your masterpiece, but the challenge is to allocate resources wisely as you build. One-hundred and fifty turns may seem like an eternity, but many of these will be skipped in the process of gathering cash and natural resources, so it's essential to build infrastructure early. A full game at average speed takes about 30 minutes. It's also easy to save any game in the middle, then restart later using a personalized city code the game assigns you.
Played on a 5x5 grid, Electrocity starts you off with a small urban center, a population of 10,000, a 25 percent tax rate, and one wind farm that provides all the town's energy. Surrounding areas are randomly populated with forests, plains, mountains, rivers, or oceanfront property.
Each area may provide resources that can only be discovered by prospecting. Once you've discovered coal or gas, you can build plants and start selling energy on the open market. You can raise and lower taxes, and upgrade your wind, coal, and gas plants as you see fit. Once you amass enough cash, you can start building luxury items such as sports stadiums, ski resorts, or beaches to attract a larger population. If you grow your population too quickly, however, you'll get crunched on your energy usage and end up paying through the nose on the open market.
I previously thought that I was much better at turn-based rather than real-time strategy games, but after playing through Electrocity, it turns out that I stink equally at both. Aside from building coal plants where there was no coal, my addiction to alternative energy and campgrounds proved to be idiotic.
On my first try, I accidentally went bankrupt in round 68 after building a large geothermal plant that send me plummeting into the red. My population barely peaked above 30,000 people. The second time, I lasted the whole 150 turns, but I couldn't seem to maintain more than 40,000 residents or keep much more than $1,000 in the bank. Good thing I'm not the king!
The city of Heter provides massive energy and numerous tourist destinations for a top rating in the Finished Cities chart
(Credit: CNET Networks)If you make it to the end of the game, you'll receive a score based on your energy management, popularity, population, and environmental prowess. I spent all of my time logging and planting forests, so it's no surprised my environmental grade was "A." My energy management (since it never advanced beyond large wind farms and small coal plants) also received an "A."
My popularity was about 90%, which only merits a "B+" grade, and I dropped the ball completely on population, averaging 34,150 citizens, which received a "C-." Oh well. My overall score wasn't much better: 76 for a "B-." After you've received your final score, you can submit your city to the Finished Cities page, which also enters you into a prize drawing.
The Finished Cities ranking on the Electrocity Web site is determined by final score, though maximum population seems to be a tie breaker. Currently the city of Heter by the player Rong is No. 1, with a whopping population of 3,897,182. Your strategy is determined slightly by the random environment you begin with, but it appears that Rong topped the list by building three large nuclear plants on the edge of town, along with oceanfront development to bring in the tourists. Your mileage will vary. My only advice is don't build a large geothermal plant without the scratch to back it up. Good luck, and happy urban planning!
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