power
Money
1:30PM Angus Kidman | Electricity bill price comparison site Switchwise has expanded from Victoria to cover the whole of Australia. Enter your postcode and details of your current area you’ll see a range of power plans for your area, including options for green power. Switchwise is free to use (and certainly beats signing up with the pushy next door-to-door salesperson offering you an energy deal). [Switchwise]
Switchwise Electricity Comparisons Now Australia-Wide
1:30PM Angus Kidman | Electricity bill price comparison site Switchwise has expanded from Victoria to cover the whole of Australia. Enter your postcode and details of your current area you’ll see a range of power plans for your area, including options for green power. Switchwise is free to use (and certainly beats signing up with the pushy next door-to-door salesperson offering you an energy deal). [Switchwise] 
Work
Switch Power Management Plans With A Hotkey
2:00AM The How-To Geek | Have you ever wanted to quickly switch from High Performance to Power Saver mode to save some battery life? With a quick command line in a shortcut, you can do it with a keystroke. More »
Fix
Top 10 Battery Hacks, Tips, And Tricks
2:00AM Kevin Purdy | The gadgets you love don’t always love you back—at least when it comes to battery life. But you can get more from your laptop, your iPod, your phone, and other devices with these 10 techniques. More »
Communicate
Mobile Phones To Get Universal Charger
10:40PM Kevin Purdy | Major mobile phone makers and carriers have signed on to support a universal, Micro-USB-powered charger. A rare good move for the environment and users. What other devices would you like to see go one-size-fits-all? via [PC World] More »
Travel
12:00PM Angus Kidman | Most of the discussion to date of the forthcoming USB 3.0 standard has centred around its much higher speeds. As the USB Forum itself likes to point out, a 25GB HD movie file could be copied in 70 seconds with USB 3.0 (versus an estimated 14 minutes on the current USB 2.0 standard). However, there’s another feature that’s potentially equally useful, especially for travellers: USB 3.0 overcomes the current USB limitation on recharging devices that are completely out of power. While USB charging via a notebook can be incredibly useful, it generally won’t work if the device has gone completely flat — at that point, you need it to be plugged straight into a wall socket until it’s got enough charge for your PC to recognise it when you connect it. As Jeff Ravencraft of the USB Forum explained at last week’s Storage Visions conference in Las Vegas, that’s no longer the case: “We now supply power to the device if you have a completely dead battery.” USB 3.0 isn’t expected to be widespread until next year (and isn’t supported in the current build of Windows 7), but it’s still something to look forward to. More »
USB 3.0 Allows Stone-Dead Devices To Be Recharged
12:00PM Angus Kidman | Most of the discussion to date of the forthcoming USB 3.0 standard has centred around its much higher speeds. As the USB Forum itself likes to point out, a 25GB HD movie file could be copied in 70 seconds with USB 3.0 (versus an estimated 14 minutes on the current USB 2.0 standard). However, there’s another feature that’s potentially equally useful, especially for travellers: USB 3.0 overcomes the current USB limitation on recharging devices that are completely out of power. While USB charging via a notebook can be incredibly useful, it generally won’t work if the device has gone completely flat — at that point, you need it to be plugged straight into a wall socket until it’s got enough charge for your PC to recognise it when you connect it. As Jeff Ravencraft of the USB Forum explained at last week’s Storage Visions conference in Las Vegas, that’s no longer the case: “We now supply power to the device if you have a completely dead battery.” USB 3.0 isn’t expected to be widespread until next year (and isn’t supported in the current build of Windows 7), but it’s still something to look forward to. More »
Work
9:30AM Angus Kidman | A post on Microsoft’s Windows 7 blog offers some interesting insight into how power consumption works on a current notebook. As the graph shows, your display consumes almost half of the total power, with the combined efforts of the chipset and processor running a close second. Improving those numbers is one of the targets for Windows 7, though I’m deeply sceptical of the claim that “most systems resume from sleep in less than 2 seconds”, improved boot times for the platform notwithstanding. Even with a relatively speedy resume, sleep functionality has also been mixed with some recent Windows notebooks I’ve owned — many have done a singularly awful job of dealing with attached devices or even reconnecting to networks. But there’s always hope, isn’t there?
Windows 7 Energy Efficiency [Engineering Windows 7]
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Where Does Your Notebook’s Power Really Go?
9:30AM Angus Kidman | A post on Microsoft’s Windows 7 blog offers some interesting insight into how power consumption works on a current notebook. As the graph shows, your display consumes almost half of the total power, with the combined efforts of the chipset and processor running a close second. Improving those numbers is one of the targets for Windows 7, though I’m deeply sceptical of the claim that “most systems resume from sleep in less than 2 seconds”, improved boot times for the platform notwithstanding. Even with a relatively speedy resume, sleep functionality has also been mixed with some recent Windows notebooks I’ve owned — many have done a singularly awful job of dealing with attached devices or even reconnecting to networks. But there’s always hope, isn’t there?
Windows 7 Energy Efficiency [Engineering Windows 7]
More »
Fix
Computer Power Management Myths Debunked
3:59AM Gina Trapani | If you think booting up and shutting down your computer negates the benefits of turning it off to begin with, or that your screensaver is saving you energy, get thee to Ted Samson’s rundown of five PC power myths and why they’re wrong. Save yourself and your company some cash and compute more sustainably by getting your computer’s power management in order. More »
Work
Find An Outlet At Your Airport
1:00AM Kevin Purdy | Microsoft evangelist Jeff Sandquist has put together a wiki sharing laptop-charging outlets in airports for the power-deprived and travel-weary. Some are easy-to-miss official stations, while others might require a bit of hubris (and flexibility on floor-sitting) to get to. (At this writing, there’s no Australian airport info, so there’s a weekend update project for someone . . .) [via Web Worker Daily] More »
Organise
1:30PM Angus Kidman | If you’re trying to trim the family budget in lean times, the electricity bill is a good place to start. More sensible use of appliances is always a good approach, but with competition now at least a partial reality, it also pays to work out if you could get a better deal on your existing service. Recently launched web comparison service Switchwise takes your location (by suburb name or postcode) and then suggests alternative suppliers that might come out cheaper (and gives you the option of switching if you want). Answering additional questions like house size and current consumption patterns refines the list, but not having to answer those questions up front makes it easier to get started. Switchwise is currently Victoria-only (like similar and previously mentioned GoSwitch), but you can sign up to be notified when it’s available in your area.
SwitchWise
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Switchwise Helps Pick Cheapest Electricity Provider
1:30PM Angus Kidman | If you’re trying to trim the family budget in lean times, the electricity bill is a good place to start. More sensible use of appliances is always a good approach, but with competition now at least a partial reality, it also pays to work out if you could get a better deal on your existing service. Recently launched web comparison service Switchwise takes your location (by suburb name or postcode) and then suggests alternative suppliers that might come out cheaper (and gives you the option of switching if you want). Answering additional questions like house size and current consumption patterns refines the list, but not having to answer those questions up front makes it easier to get started. Switchwise is currently Victoria-only (like similar and previously mentioned GoSwitch), but you can sign up to be notified when it’s available in your area.
SwitchWise
More »
Fix
