my computers never get turned off, the powersurge when booting them accounts for several hours of keeping them running, and the increased wear and tear on components due to booting and shutting down as compared to keeping them running would degrade their lifespan seriously enough that any "savings" are undone.

WWF are out of their minds... As are pretty much all greenies.
They have a political agenda and don't mind corrupting facts to get their way.

Consider that people have been saying with "authority" for the last 50 years that we're going to run out of oil within a decade...

Yes, you shouldn't waste. But do know what you're "saving" when you're going to do something as most such "programs" are just ways to get to your money for no gain anywhere except to the people running said "program".

I rarely turn my computer off at home, but I normally do turn my monitor off when I'm not using it. Not because I want to save planet earth but just being mindful of my electric bill, although I doubt it really makes much difference.

This is just another one of those 'Black Google uses less display energy' scams - which actually earns the site operators a nice little bit of advertising revenue in the process of using additional power by piggy-backing an extra server into the Google search equation.

Avoid it. That would be my advice. Just use Google or your usual search engine of choice and the planet will die no more quickly.

I Don't agree mate with your claim that this is another scam.

Firstly all those blackgoogles use google engine to search - so basically the search results are the same than by using the real one, eh? Secondly what comes to earning from PPC - I guess there is no harm done trying to earn some extra as long as the green message goes trough. How many ads you see on daniweb?

Then secondly Greenergle in my opinion stands out to its advance by trying to get people to do other stuff too to save energy. And yes saving energy means saving money too.. so everyone is happy You cannot deny that their 10 ways to save energy doesnt make sense!?

In one sense I agree that those other blackgoogles try to misslead people to use them just with missleading that black uses less energy in all monitors...what I have read is that on LCDs black actually uses 1kw more than white... so they really dont make that difference in trying to get people greener.

I have used computers since times of Commondore 64 and have to say that makes me sad to hear comments like jwenting's one... I always have turned off my computers for nights (if not needed) and my hardware has almost always lasted years and years. Keeping them on 24/7 surely will cause more "wearing out" than shutting down for night. Have you listened sometimes your Windows do grinding while its IDLE. It must be so healthy to your computer - NOOT. Please light me up if I am totally wrong.

Yes. But if these people really cared about saving the planet, and really thought that energy consumption was the problem, then you might think the fact that they are contributing to this by running a server that isn't required might have occurred to them.

By which I mean that Google is already running its server farm, consuming power. This service, and others, are then taking the Google search and asking people to come to them instead of going straight to the source. By so doing they are factoring in an additional layer of power consumption via their own server, which is totally unnecessary as the user could have just gone straight to Google in the first place with less power consumption impact.

If you see what I mean.

Which leaves me with the only possible conclusion that they are really only in it for the advertising dollar and nothing more...

me! always! I turn my brothers' pc off if he isnt using it, I turn the backlight off on my laptop if i'm going away for more than a minute - the monitor turns off after 5.

And its a black google with green text? f'n sweet.

There are several flies in this environmental ointment:

- The computer itself uses very little power, compared to other devices in the house, unless it is actually in use. The disk drives use more power than anything else. The power supply wattage ratings includes a reserve for sudden instantaneous power usage.

- CRT monitors and printers are the big power draws with computers.

- Many employers require employees to leave their computers on at night. They set up software upgrades and virus scans to occur dutring this time, so they don't subtract from employee productivity.

- The biggest environmental problem caused by computers is the solid waste caused by the joint efforts of Microsoft and Intel to make computers "bigger and better" by requiring hardware and software upgrades every three years. If we could have a requirement that operating systems must never change, this problem would go away.

Some of the "power saving" advice spewed by the "save the earth" groups is ludicrous:

- They tell you to unplug your TV, VCR, and other electronic appliances when you aren't using thenm, because they draw tiny amounts of power to maintain settings. But they forget that such a device can require 15 minutes to half an hour for you to restore those settings before you can use it. It takes this much time if you have to restore radio or TV station settings. So the device draws more power during that period you plug it in and turn it on before you can use it than it would draw for a week if you leave it plugged in.

- They tell you to turn fluorescent lamps off when you nleave the room. This will save a small amount of energy, but cost you more money in replacement bulbs. The life of a fluorescent bulb is incorrectly stated on the package, because the stupid law requires an average life measured in hours. The life of a fluorescent lamp should be rated in number of times it is turned on. A fluorescent lamp lasts for between 6000 and 7000 starts. So you might save a tiny bit on power, but pay through the nose on bulb replacement.

- They don't seem to understand that power is generated in blocks, not tiny increments to supply each tiny appliance that is connected or disconnected. The power company equipment can't adjust up or down in such fine increments. Instead, the power produced is usually several blocks above the actual draw, to handle any sudden extra loads that might be switched on. The portion of power not used is wasted. But if power companies did not produce this extra power, a power failure would occur if unexpect3ed large loads switched on.

-

I rarely use Bold font when I'm writing design documents, the energy saving from that is enough to light up Blackpool Tower for a week

Slightly off-topic, but what the heck. About 20 years a go a colleague of mine decided to play an April Fool gag in his column in a fanzine/newsletter we both contributed to called JAM (Just Amiga Monthly) here in the UK.

His article was about a velocity sensitive keyboard. Hit the keys harder for bold, really hard for underlined, that kind of thing. Was very funny, and very well written.

So well written that some lazy idiot columnist in New Computer Express, a weekly computer newspaper that had a pretty big market share back in the day, wrote it up as his own exclusive the following week. It was really funny, reading how he had exclusively tested the keyboard and could report back that it worked really well...