I think I’ve talked before about multi-tasking, but can’t find the exact post anywhere. Either way, let me clarify right now that I’m really not the type of person to believe in anything — like, anything at all (restrictive diets, organized religion, true love, whatever), but when it comes to astrology, I am SO a Taurus, and my rising sign is SO Gemini. I realize I sound ridiculous saying this, but truly, I find comfort (Taurus) in gathering information (Gemini) — more and more and more of it, all at once.
Hence, multi-tasking. I check e-mail a million times a day, check facebook at least five times a day, check numerous blogs at least once a day, then on top of that I’ll have a few Skype conversations, a G-chat or two, some articles to research, new house stuff to organize, meals to make, then eat, trips to plan, and all of this tends to happen at once.
This is BAD, though!
It’s been proven in many and many a study that the more you try to focus on at once, the less productive you are. And because so much of what I do revolves around my computer, it means I usually have at least five or six applications running at any given time.
But as my tech-savvy friend pointed out recently, this also has an environmental impact. The more programs I’m trying to run at once, the more energy that’s required. If I just use Firefox, then quit that and just use Word, then quit that and just use Skype, it’s more efficient, and efficiency = green.
No, you’re right, this isn’t a massive change, but it’s one that I hope will keep me a little more focused and keep my MacBook a little less stressed.
MacBook image from o’er here
Is that true? I don’t know why but I would think your computer would use the same energy whatever, it’ll just go slower as the processor is doing more – or am I being a bit thick?
I find this interesting too! I would have thought it would take more energy to restart Word every time you need it then to just have it running in the background. I am the QUEEN of open applications, but will gladly close them if energy is saved….
I’d like to hear your friend’s argument. Some processors have power regulation technology and will drop their power draw *somewhat* in response to demand, but you generally see those in small mobile devices like smart phones and not in larger computers. As a result, there really isn’t a difference on larger devices.
So, I’d like to see your friend’s argument and proof.
Have you tried using something like Google Reader? You can keep track of your favorite blogs/new sites (and even Facebook posts) all by visiting one page. It will save you flipping thru websites looking for updates.
I have to admit, I never notice my laptop running out of juice faster when I have multiple programs running than when I don’t…but I think it’s probably still a good idea to only have one program running just for productivity reasons.
I’m a huge computer addict and I’ve been trying to wean myself off (not completely, just some.) It’s very hard.
Haha, Rhett, I should’a known you’d come along and challenge me on this one! I’ll see if I can find my friend online and get him to prove his point (he’s about six hours behind, though, so it might be later). Anyway, my very unscientific proof of this would just be that my laptop seems to get hotter and hotter the more apps I run. I suppose it doesn’t really do this if I have Firefox and Skype open at the same time, but if I try to upload photos on iPhoto while playing music on iTunes and emailing someone at the same time — it’ll go bonkers.
I don’t know what processors MacBooks these days are sporting, but they may include a technology similar to SpeedStep which dynamically regulates the clock frequency on the chip. During periods of low load, the clock cycles lower and sometimes components of the processor are placed in a standby mode. It’s possible your MacBook contains a feature like this.
The big thing here, though, has to do with which programs we’re talking about. A web browser spends most of its time idle. Skype is similar. Ditto your email client. You can stack a large number of “mostly idle” programs together and they will not increase the load on the processor because they’re all in an “asleep” state in the operating system. Uploading files, playing music, and other things that have real-time expectations will have a higher processor load.
But it’s not a universal hardware feature. My laptop has SpeedStep. Amy’s laptop doesn’t. In practice, I don’t know how heavily this really translates in terms of power draw.
I should also note that, on laptops which have a dynamic power scaling system, they usually disable the power scaling feature the moment you plug them in. That’s often a configurable setting however, so you should explore that further.
You should get a Kill-a-Watt. It’s a little instrument that you plug in to the wall, and then you plug your appliance in to it, and it tells you how many kW it’s drawing. It also has the capability to keep track of how many kWh you use over a period of time. It goes in real time, so you could see how your draw changes as you open more programs, and you could also see if the draw increases as a program is opened, and then drops down again once it’s open.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/05/killawatt.php
I can’t verify if this is true, and I was surprised when I read it recently on a computer blog, but supposedly if a Mac has a lot of icons on the desktop it will use up more energy. They recommended putting everything away in folders.
I don’t know if this applies to PCs as well.
I was reading the book and noticed that this day was not included. I don’t believe running less apps will easily save power, in part because of what Rhett, that most “interactive” apps spend most of the time idle; but also because today’s computers tipically come with multi-core processors, which behave (mostly) as if they were independent processors. Thus, if you run only one program at a time, you are basically wasting the procissing power of at least one core (because multi-core processors are designed so that each application run in it’s own core).