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Trash Talk - Black screen saving power

BDwinsAlt - Thu May 24, 2007 2:47 pm
Post subject: Black screen saving power

Is a black screen really that significant over a white screen when it comes to saving power? I decided to use a black theme for my laptop because it looks a little cooler. I was wonder if it can add a few minutes to my battery life? I have a 6-cell lithium ion or something I thing. It came with the Dell 1501. I could have gotten the 9-cell, but I never carry my laptop around more than three hours without it being on charge. Anyway, will this black theme save me a few minutes or is all that just a bunch of bs?

CypherJF - Thu May 24, 2007 5:10 pm
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Just have the monitor/screen shut off.

SamHughes - Thu May 24, 2007 5:45 pm
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It will save you nothing. In fact it will probably cost you. Black requires voltage, while white doesn't, on most displays ('every' display? Maybe.)

If you want to save power, dim the backlight.

BDwinsAlt - Thu May 24, 2007 6:17 pm
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Thanks. I just keep seeing this black google stuff on TV.

Animate Dreams - Thu May 24, 2007 9:23 pm
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SamHughes wrote:

It will save you nothing. In fact it will probably cost you. Black requires voltage, while white doesn't, on most displays ('every' display? Maybe.)

If you want to save power, dim the backlight.

I thought LCD screens just turned the pixel off for black? It's not a true black, anyway.

SamHughes - Thu May 24, 2007 11:08 pm
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LCD screens work with a single backlight and an array of liquid crystals (and two polarized sheets). For each pixel, if the voltage is at the maximum level, the light is blocked off nearly completely, and if the voltage is at the minimum level, the light is allowed to pass through freely. How close you get to 'true' black depends on the precision and accuracy in voltage level. It also depends on how wide a spectrum the color filters let pass through, since the crystals have different refractive indexes at different wavelengths (it depends on that aspect of the crystals, too). The backlight is the major energy hog. Remember that when you set your screen to #FFFFFF white, that's much less bright than the actual backlight, since each color filter is cutting out a large amount of light.

Doc Flabby - Fri May 25, 2007 3:08 am
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Nearly all laptops have a special turn off screen key. Thats the button to use to save power.

BDwinsAlt - Fri May 25, 2007 3:33 am
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Yeah but how does that help you while you are using it.

CypherJF - Fri May 25, 2007 7:15 am
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To conserve power when the laptop is on, you'll have to adjust the contrast/brightness.

Smong - Sat May 26, 2007 8:35 am
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What about disabling the network adapter? Will that save power?

BDwinsAlt - Sat May 26, 2007 10:38 am
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Maybe they will find this awesome new technology to make laptops have smaller batteries with more time. Didn't they just find a new way to make processors like a 100 times faster? I would think as time goes on you could get a better battery without buying something based on 6 cells or 9.

"The processor performs 8 trillion operations per second, equivalent to a super-computer and 1,000 times faster than standard processors, with 256 lasers performing computations at light speed."
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/10/31/israel.lenslet.reut/

Maverick - Sat May 26, 2007 1:48 pm
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Black color only saves on a CRT monitor but it's so little that you won't get any advantage out of it.

Animate Dreams - Sat May 26, 2007 4:14 pm
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BDwinsAlt wrote:

Maybe they will find this awesome new technology to make laptops have smaller batteries with more time. Didn't they just find a new way to make processors like a 100 times faster?

BDwinsAlt wrote:

I would think as time goes on you could get a better battery without buying something based on 6 cells or 9.

"The processor performs 8 trillion operations per second, equivalent to a super-computer and 1,000 times faster than standard processors, with 256 lasers performing computations at light speed."
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/10/31/israel.lenslet.reut/

Oh. So someone made a supercomputer that was 1 000 times faster. That's completely different, you know.

Dr Brain - Wed May 30, 2007 2:34 am
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SamHughes wrote:

While all of this is probably true (I didn't bother verifying it), higher voltage on the liquid crystal doesn't necessarily mean higher power consumption. In some setups it may even be lower. It is, however, a very minor difference, and it's the backlight that consumes most of the power.