Hmm, I had to tick most of the boxes as I write graphics software and games for a living. Most of my work at home is done using a nice but reasonably efficient laptop, although my work machine tends to be a powerful graphics workstation, given the nature of how I make my beans.

I've always striven towards writing efficient code, simply from an engineering elegance point of view but using a laptop with good power and cooling management has really brought home the power cost of efficient computing. If an application is really sucking up the watts, you have physical indicators of this on a laptop with the whirring fan and increasing temperature of air shooting out of the grill. This has encouraged me to write code that doesn't tax the machine unnecessarily.

That said, It would be nice if desktop machines could retain their upgradability (I hate the idea of throwing away a whole machine when only one component needs upgrading or replacing) but be more energy efficient. I believe google is pushing a 12 volt standard for DC output of the power supply which they say would be more efficient than the current multi-volt system. If all low voltage electronic goods could do this, or at least have standardized sockets for different DC voltages, we could do away with all these inefficient power packs and have one larger, more energy efficient 120/240 AC to 12v (or less) DC transformer in the house, which could use the waste heat for water heating, and DC sockets on plugs.

Efficient code certainly helps, but a better place to start would be to simply move towards more efficient power supplies. As a general rule, heat is very bad; a hot computer is wasting power and damaging components. If manufacturers would adopt power supplies that comply with the "80 Plus" program, desktop computers would simply use less power, at peak load or otherwise.

Likewise, we need to advocate for more efficient processors and other components. Not only does not have the benefit of less power draw, but it would also cause less heat wear on the computer as a whole, expanding the lifespan of computers and creating less waste.

A watt is a unit of power. A watt-hour is a unit of energy, the amount of energy consumed in one hour by a device that reqires one watt of power to operate (or, at three watts, the energy consumed by an OLPC XO laptop in twenty minutes). If all our computers use 60,000 megawatts of power, then that is bad, as it would take two Thee Gorges Dams at 30,000 megawatts each to power all our computers.

A watt per hour is a unit measuring rate of change of power, and is actually not that common. To say that all our computers use 60,000 megawatts per hour is therefore to say that two Three Gorges Dams need to be built _every hour_ to sustain the rate of change of power consumption. This would be Very Bad, but we aren't there yet.

This post would not exist if it were not for Nick Carr (NOT CELINE). You should have referenced the original source of the idea, rather than referring to yourself with a link. It's tacky to pass ideas off as your own.