Before I jump into this blog's topic I want to tellyou guys about something. At a traffic light on my way to work yesterday I heard laughter in the car next to me. I turned to see a couple in the car furiously playing a multiplayer game of Mario Kart on their DSs before the light turned green. I smiled for a long time.

   I've been wondering for a while just how much electricity I use gaming. I came across an interesting nytimes article 

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/consumption-study-takes-aim-at-game-consoles/

   It's quite astounding how much console energy consumption jumps between generations. This generation in particular, with the advent of HD graphics, pushed power consuption into the hundreds of Watts.

http://www.sust-it.net/energy_saving.php?id=71

The notable exception in that list being the Wii which uses less energy than a gamecube (who woulda thunk that duct tape was energy-saving). It's clear that the first iterations of these consoles used much more power than was necessary. The slim version of the PS3 uses drastically less power than the older version (see link below) and the 360's power usage has been reduced as they moved from 90nm chips to 65nm and most recently to 45 nm chips. 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10318727-1.html

 I use my 360 slim fairly heavily, especially around the holidays. About 80 hours a month at an average of 85cent per kWh comes to about $6.50 a month. Remember though that if your console is on, your TV is probably on too and most likely a surround sound system as well. Now that Netflix is so well integrated I find myself falling asleep with the console on quite regularly. Usually,  if I think I'm going to fall asleep watching something I use the TV's sleep function to keep it form being on all night but our consoles don't work that way. The 360 can be set to turn itself off after six hours of inactivity. Six hours! Which is to say if I fall asleep watching something it'll turn itself off just before I get up and turn it on again. Smooth move Microsoft. Of course, I know it's my responsibility to turn it off if I don't want it on all night, and I do... but sometimes I just want to listen to Keith David intimidate someone as I fall asleep.

Oh shit. I just saw the trailer for Fable III and there's this huge battle scene in which a very angry female townsperson hurls a cannonball at the enemy! She... somewhere a cannon operator just got laid off.

Bye.