Polling for power consumption through a web site is pretty much a worthless idea..
I agree with most of what both posts said, about how great it could be if the appliances would consume energy according to a set budget. However, I don't agree with the quoted idea about polling for power consumption by using a web site or some other paperless method being worthless.
Specially if the user could actually monitor which appliances are the ones consuming the most. This data could be further exploited with software by creating recommendations based on this consumption.
The big hassle right now would of course be related to the fact that this devices aren't "smart" enough and monitoring would depend on the user providing some info manually. I guess right now this would mean that the results wouldn't be as precise, but an interested user could get approximate results from this in order to make changes that benefit his/her pocket and/or the environment.
And of course, as technology matures, things can get better by providing easier to use interfaces and the proposed idea of smart appliances, as already mentioned here.
First, hello. I'm a Mac (user), since.. well, always... I've been checking out Ubuntu in the past few months. I first tried to install it on a friend's PC box, but unfortunately he uses dial-up and it was complicated for us linux noobs to get the drivers working.
I still got to use the system and thought it was very interesting and "friendly" in many aspects. I also learned quite some stuff about Linux which will be useful later (and actually has been useful for a couple issues I had with my TiBook).
Now, I'm into certain projects which have made me check out edubuntu so I downloaded the Live CD. Tried it on my TiBook. I had just bought a few days ago a PCMCIA Wifi card (airport card reception is very bad on these if you didn't know) and was impressed that the distro recognized the card right away. However, I was not able to configure it to connect to my network (I still don't know much about using the OS so that may have to do with it).
On the OS X side, I installed the drivers and I could get connected to my network without hassles.
So, Ubuntu brings good software for most basic uses (not all, but I guess you can install that easily, don't know yet), except when it comes to getting online thru something that isn't ethernet. I'm sure it's possible; it's just not as easy as I feel it should be (for me and at least one of my friends).
I will however, try installing this on a beige G3 (still don't know if it will work), because hacking OS X into it isn't that great either. And I think Ubuntu will only get better with time anyways!
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I agree with most of what both posts said, about how great it could be if the appliances would consume energy according to a set budget. However, I don't agree with the quoted idea about polling for power consumption by using a web site or some other paperless method being worthless.
Specially if the user could actually monitor which appliances are the ones consuming the most. This data could be further exploited with software by creating recommendations based on this consumption.
The big hassle right now would of course be related to the fact that this devices aren't "smart" enough and monitoring would depend on the user providing some info manually. I guess right now this would mean that the results wouldn't be as precise, but an interested user could get approximate results from this in order to make changes that benefit his/her pocket and/or the environment.
And of course, as technology matures, things can get better by providing easier to use interfaces and the proposed idea of smart appliances, as already mentioned here.
Ok, I guess I can share my experiences here...
First, hello. I'm a Mac (user), since.. well, always... I've been checking out Ubuntu in the past few months. I first tried to install it on a friend's PC box, but unfortunately he uses dial-up and it was complicated for us linux noobs to get the drivers working.
I still got to use the system and thought it was very interesting and "friendly" in many aspects. I also learned quite some stuff about Linux which will be useful later (and actually has been useful for a couple issues I had with my TiBook).
Now, I'm into certain projects which have made me check out edubuntu so I downloaded the Live CD. Tried it on my TiBook. I had just bought a few days ago a PCMCIA Wifi card (airport card reception is very bad on these if you didn't know) and was impressed that the distro recognized the card right away. However, I was not able to configure it to connect to my network (I still don't know much about using the OS so that may have to do with it).
On the OS X side, I installed the drivers and I could get connected to my network without hassles.
So, Ubuntu brings good software for most basic uses (not all, but I guess you can install that easily, don't know yet), except when it comes to getting online thru something that isn't ethernet. I'm sure it's possible; it's just not as easy as I feel it should be (for me and at least one of my friends).
I will however, try installing this on a beige G3 (still don't know if it will work), because hacking OS X into it isn't that great either. And I think Ubuntu will only get better with time anyways!
My main mac (mini) will still use OS X.