Comments on: ‘Low carbon’ font spells futility

By: David Bradley

David Bradley — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 15:17:35 +0000

This is hilarious and certainly goes well my clockwork slipper headlights and combined tidal-powered sunlounger and cheese grater

By: flaxdoctor

flaxdoctor — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 21:38:10 +0000

Doh! Foiled again. Guess I’m confused with the off state on watches and calculators being clear and LCD screens being black.

By: manigen

manigen — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 19:31:15 +0000

Thanks Jobe! That was definitely above and beyond the call of duty.

By: Jobe

Jobe — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:10:22 +0000

Hi all!… first time commenting here, so..uhm…hello!

To manigen and flexdr!

I think i can help on the monitor thingy… prolly cos what you two said got me curious, but mainly cos i cant sleep and had just changed the battery for my clamp meter :P

I figured that it was as what flexdr said, with LCDs always having their backlights on would have barely a diff on white n black pixels…and blackle seemed a bit of a marketing gig at first glance…

I also didn’t think blackle should have had to quote a whole darn Robertson et. al. paper on their “about” page for just 1 sentence on “displayed images” from 1 paragraph that wasn’t tested much further in the paper. It seemed just so much of a hype attempt.

Anyways, long story short:
Here is my tribute to the anally trivial :)

LCD Monitor = Dell 3007WFP (30″ LCD Monitor)
CRT Monitor = Dell P1130 (21″ CRT Monitor)
Black page = http://www.blackle.com on Chrome app window on fullscreen
White page = http://www.google.com.my on Chrome app window on fullscreen

Only power source for the monitors was clamped and tested.

LCD with Black page: 0.46 A
LCD with White page: 0.51 A
Just under 10% difference

CRT with Black page: 0.42 A
CRT with White page: 0.52 A
More than 20% difference

Does it take more to display a white pixel than a black on pretty standard CRT or LCD type monitor?

“Aye!”

heh :P

Cheers all!
-e-

By: reef

reef — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:08:17 +0000

Either way if it is more difficult to render/read on screen (LCD or otherwise), it will spend more time on your screen, potentially using more energy than the predicted savings.
And that’s even before you get headaches from squinting at your eco-media…

By: manigen

manigen — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 14:03:32 +0000

Flaxdoctor: Ah, I was under the impression that it was the other way round. Of course, if you’re right, then the folks at http://www.blackle.com/ have been lying to us.

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 13:52:43 +0000

Actually, it was 1% inspiration and 99% marketing. The font was produced by a marketing company, who managed to get most major news outlets to pick it up, and drive traffic to their website and get their brand better-known.

The actual font is utterly pointless.

By: flaxdoctor

flaxdoctor — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 13:03:07 +0000

manigen, sorry to split hairs, but I think you’re wrong. The natural state of your lcd is clear, thus transmitting the light from your backlight. If you apply power to a pixel, it’ll black out (or display a colour/whatever). So having more clear pixels on your screen mean there might be less power use.

Utter trivia anyway, quite like the story about this miserably useless font…

By: manigen

manigen — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 12:18:55 +0000

That\\\’s… so… rubbish…

Apart from anything else, increasing the amount of white on an LCD screen increases the power usage, so I\\\’m not convinced that this font would save much carbon over all.