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A simple trick to conserve laptop battery power
Authored by: raider on Dec 08, '05 09:13:52AM
While it is true that you cannot guarantee that any specific color will use less power in ANY LCD, it is fairly safe to assume that BLACK reduces power consumption in MOST laptop and computer LCD monitors.

It all depends on how the LCD is built.

I ran into this discussion - coincidentally - just a couple days ago in relation to the iPod and photoshop someone had done of a black iPod with black interface. A couple hours of looking into it, I found that I could not guarantee with certainty what would save power on any individual LCD.

The consensus, however, seems to be that the iPod has "white" as the default "off" color, and monitors use "black" as the default "off" color.

The reason the "off" color will save power, even though the backlight is still on, is because each pixel consumes power to allow light through. In the "off" color the pixel is not consuming any electricity.

When you want to use a different color, the pixel has to consume power - which causes the crystal to either rotate or straighten out (depending on the type of LCD). There are three crystals per pixel (rgb) and all three have to have power applied to make a color.

So the more pixels that are set in the "off" color, the fewer pixels that are consuming electricity.

My 15inch laptop is 1280x854 which is 1,093,120 pixels or 3,279,360 crystals. Each one consumes power in any color except black.

For more information about how LCDs consume power (other than the backlight) check out HowStuffWorks.com

How LCDs Work

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in that case, this should help even more
Authored by: stevebr on Dec 08, '05 09:48:27AM

If turning the pixels off means longer battery life, then in addition to inverting the display, switching to grayscale and increasing contrast should improve results: fewer pixels will be lit with these settings.

Pure speculation, but it follows from the reasoning of the parent post.



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