Today's watercooler chat, if Slashdot is anything to go by, should be about how black web pages can save power. Some reckon that taking the world's most popular sites and painting them black will save megawatts of energy... so we're going to do our bit!
It's been said that going from all-white to all-black can save about 15 watts on a monitor's power consumption. Somebody took that and worked out that if Google moved to a black background, 750 Megawatt hours per year could be saved. Amazing.
In light of this astonishing discovery (and because somebody's done it to google already) we've implemented a beta version of HEXUS designed to keep monitor power consumption to a minimum. Check out the beta site; you can actually feel the planet breathe a sigh of relief.
Of course, it could all be bull. Consider that TFTs work by aligning liquid crystals - once they've been jiggled into position there's not much power consumption there. The power is used in the back lighting and making things move. Black backgrounds don't involve that much animation. Well, none at all, actually.
Maybe in the days of CRTs, things were different. But now, perhaps this is a waste of effort.
BRB, gotta go check on the cold fusion reactor in the shed.
