Slashdot Mirror
Wireless Internet In An Off-Grid House
matt20 writes "This is an interesting article of a family living off-grid using solar panels. In such a setting, every watt adds up. The typical home computer and monitor use almost 150 watts. What is the best computer arrangement in such a setting? Here is what worked best for them. Anyone know what percent of our national power is used on computers? Should we be thinking wireless on laptops?" Even on-grid, this article raises some good points about power consumption and convenience.
Anyone know what percent of our national power is used on computers?
Judging by the unavailability of this site, I'd say not nearly enough.
Is your browser retarded?
3) Consider replacing your Athlon Windows XP machine with a 386/33 with 4MB of RAM, running Linux of course.
4) Better yet, replace your computer altogether with an abacus.
5) Don't use a hard drive : They wastefully spins all the time the system is on. Stick with a 3 1/2" (or 5 1/4") floppy disk drive.
6) This one is a big one, but many people are not aware of it: Each incoming bit cumulates power into your system, to the point that a fast incoming stream with minimal outgoing can actually power your system purely by the internet connection. This is a tremendous power saving (or even GENERATING) tip: Go onto IRC into some of the hackers, and threaten those bisnatchis that you have a tremendous connection, and they can't possibly DOS you, etc. Soon they'll have all their clients ping you, and you'll be literally soaking up the wattage packaged bits. If you can keep this going overnight, your computer will actually start feeding power into your houses grid (MAKE SURE IT CAN HANDLE THIS! You may need a flux capacitor to ensure that it can modulate and store the excess).
ok, someone explain this to me. For a site to get slashdotted, slashdot readers would need to click through to read the articles...but as a long-time slashdot reader, I know that nobody here actually reads the articles, so...what's really taking down all these web servers?
Get a laptop and several batteries. plug the laptop in to power anywhere you can... hotels, friends houses, offices, wherever! charge up all your batteries and you're good to go. two batteries could be easily charged up throughout a day's use at the office and friend's houses. and one lasts for at least 3 hours. Weekends would be difficult, as would long programming runs.
Oh shit! I forgot to click "Post Anonymously"...
I thought it was because that sadistic cunt electrocuted a circus elephant with AC power in order to scare the public into believing it was more dangerous than AC.
Rot in hell, Edison.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
(note to moderators- don't get into a tissy fit about the "TV sucks" comment. if you care about both the environment and computers (i.e. you're not a hippie or a geek, you're just well educated), you realize that TV is a waste of time)
I think you meant to replace TV above with /.
In the stupider days of my youth, I was disassembling a phone that was still hooked up. I was holding the piezo ringer element between my thumb and forefinger when it rang - for a full second, my entire body was buzzing, and I absolutely could not let go.
When I was finally able to rip my skin from the piezo, a very clear thumbprint was burned into the thin metal.
Moral of the story: Don't play with phone network devices while they're still plugged in...
Approximately 1 in 10,000 households and businesses in the US get their power from people other than their local government-approved grid. Given a population of 260 million, and assuming that one household or business exists for every 2 people, that's 13000 establishments within the US that aren't giving us money!
Now, since if these people would probably chew through $10,000 per year in electricity. That's $130,000,000 that ends up in other people's pockets!
The sky is falling on this industry and we need laws to prevent this!