14 DAY TRIAL // The global warming issue has been haunting us for some years now and its effects are more and more acute as the climate is passing through a major change. In the last years, the temperatures have reached very high values in cool parts of the globe and in the hotspots (and I do not mean that figuratively) of the planet the chill has found its refuge.
Some scientists say that this effect is the cause of a change beyond human power, others say that we did it ourselves. I tend to go with the second explanation as human self destructive power has been proven many time throughout history (think how close we were to a nuclear war during the missile crisis).
From my point of view, one thing is certain: the winters back home are not what they used to be. This year it barely snowed and summer is getting hotter each year.
Can we fight this? Yes, by reducing the toxicity level in the air, preserving the trees we have left and planting new ones. At least these are the methods I know (I am not too much of an environmentalist, but I care for the health of our planet). And yet new ways are give to us by means of software. There is no complicated technology, just a simple application monitoring the electricity we are using with our computers.
Low electricity consumption results in a few benefits for our planet as less trees are cut and less gas is used for providing it, all this leading to an amelioration of the global warming. Theoretically. However, it is worth a try as if it is not beneficial for the planet it is beneficial for us as individuals because the electric bill will shrink a little.
This can be achieved with any shutdown timer but I chose local Cooling in particular as it also displays the amount of energy saved by your computer. That is pretty cool. The application is absolutely free of charge and comes from Uniblue Systems.
Local Cooling is actually a software designed to switch off the monitor, spin down the disks and shutdown the PC after a user defined time of inactivity. The application is designed to run on Windows XP but you can also give it a try on Vista as the only difference is that the interface will look funny.
We cannot speak of an interface here as the sticky window of the software displays only the number of trees you have saved while using it, the gallons of oil that have not been used because of your economy plan and the KWh spared during the process. My values are only one day old so they are not at all impressive.
However, the Settings area is the core of the program. It consists of four tabs aiming at allowing you to set the various power save modes available, learn about the estimated power usage of your PC or customize the settings.
General tab presents four levels of power save mode (Low, Medium, High and Custom). For each level the time values for turning off the monitor, spinning down the disks and shutting down the PC are different. But you can edit them at any time. Additional information available here shows your contribution to bettering the global warming (trees, gallons of oil and electricity saved since using the program). The user is also displayed the estimated average of optimization for the electricity.
Moving a little to the right, in the My Power tab, you will find the estimated electricity usage for the main components of your computer: monitor, hard drive(s), CPU, graphic card and the rest of the hardware cumulated. The sum of all the usage is presented in the lower part of the window.
Advanced tab is nothing else but the editing section for the values in General tab. This is where you can set the duration after which the monitor should switch off (in my case this did not work neither on Vista nor on XP) or set the time for the PC to either turn off or enter hibernation stage. If you want to wait for a program to close in order to turn off the PC, the option is available and you can specify the executable that should be running in order to prevent shutting down the system.
"Never shutdown before" option is yet another function I could not use. The problem here was with setting the hour. The software did not allow me to set the hour but only the minutes.
The last tab available is My Account. This is the statistics area. The user is shown the number of points accumulated due to saving the trees, oil and electricity. In order to see how far behind you are from other users of the software you are provided a ranking.
The Good
Very easy to use, the application requires the minimum effort from your part. The main window displays how much you have saved by reducing the usage of your PC.
The Bad
The monitor would not switch off when the time came. Also, the time after which the computer could shut down was impossible to set.
The Truth
The initiative is just great. Diminish the electricity usage in order to save the planet from global warming. It still needs to suffer minor "surgeries", but it is on the way of getting improved. And from what the developers say in a few weeks it'll also be Vista compatible.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
