How much power does your IT equipment use?

Product Review:
Belkin Conserve Insight
RRP: $49.95

Tech devices use power — that much is quite obvious — but over time the amount of work that’s been put into power conservation has been considerable. Today’s laptops and desktops are more power efficient than ever before, but this is mostly so that vendors can talk up the battery life figures of systems.  With (at the time of writing) Earth Hour fast approaching, the subject of sensible power usage is at the forefront. The actual power and CO2 savings of Earth Hour are debatable (especially if you do things like light lots of candles to mitigate the loss of light), but it’s what you do with the knowledge gained going forwards that could make a difference.

If you’re not of a mind to be worried about the effect of power usage on the planet, you should at least see that the use of power when it’s not needed is an unnecessary drain on your own personal resources, namely the money that’s in your wallet. Power prices have risen in recent years, and it’s unlikely they’ll become any cheaper any time soon.

Belkin recently sent me a number of review samples from its Conserve range, including the Conserve Insight, a plug-in power meter. Belkin’s not alone in this field — many hardware stores will sell this type of simple power meter, and if you’re really keen, it’s possible to have whole-of-house (or office) meters installed as well.

The Conserve Insight is  a chunky standard pass-through plug with a meter attached, and the claim that it’ll help you work out your real energy costs by plugging your devices into it. This obviously isn’t limited to IT-style technology power metering, but for the purposes of experimentation, I used it to measure power draw in my office, which connects up surge protected power boards to a single wall socket plug. The idea with the Insight is pretty simple; as you plug in any electricity drawing device, the display shows the choice of cost, watts or CO2 production for that device. The cost and C02 production costs can be varied if you’ve got access to that kind of information; your power bill should certainly at least show you the kW/hr cost you’re paying.

With nothing plugged in, not surprisingly the cost and power draw were negligible. A single power board with a backup drive and a couple of attached chargers saw it spring up to between $26-$60 per annum. Belkin’s claim is that over time the Insight will “average out” your usage based on actual full power draw, which is reasonable enough; many devices draw a lot of power in the startup phase but less in operation, and some more efficient IT devices have very low hibernation power draw. Adding a second power board running some speakers and an office TV on standby saw it stick resolutely just above $60, but no longer down in the $20 range at all. Plugging in a PC, however, saw the figure jump very quickly up to $295, and a second PC saw that hop up to a scary $610 per annum. That fluctuated quite a bit, but again most PCs are pretty power hungry when they’re first starting up, and over a short while things settled down a touch.

Those are annual figures for cost, although I later worked out its inbuilt charging rate was a little lower than the price I actually pay; a 20% premium or so over those figures is more in line with actual usage.

The Insight (or any similar plug in charger) won’t save you a single cent or a single square centimetre of the planet without actually acting on the information you give it. In my case, that involved wandering around the thick layers of dusty cables to spot those things I could easily leave unplugged until absolutely needed, even if it seemed like they weren’t on or might only have a minor amount of standby power usage. Devices you’ll constantly be firing up and down might not need to apply, but it’s quite likely in the average office or home there are mobile phone chargers sitting around doing little but heating the room gently, speakers that aren’t doing much speaking to speak of and even laptops lying dormant waiting for your command. There’s a convenience to having a laptop spring to life at your command, but is it equal to the convenience of having air you can breathe or more money in your wallet at the end of the year?

Power Tips

There’s more notebooks sold now than desktops by a rather healthy margin, and this year should also see smartphones overtake standard mobiles as the portable phone platform of choice. Whether it’s a smartphone or a laptop, one thing remains constant: You can never have too much power.

Not so much in terms of processing power, although that can be quite handy, but definitely in terms of actual juice to run your computer or smartphone. Despite years of incremental advancements in battery technology, and the promise that fuel cells are “just around the corner” for longer than anybody wants to admit, most systems struggle to get through a full day without wanting to be connected to the mains. It gets worse the older any system gets, as batteries gracefully (and sometimes not so gracefully) degrade, giving you less and less time to get your computing tasks done.

There’s not that much you can do about battery degradation aside from purchasing new batteries when they go from “functional” to “able to hold less than a minute’s charge”, but there’s plenty of things you can do to make the battery you’ve got now last longer in actual usage. Here’s some quick tips:

1) Dim the screen

Brighter screens are easier to see, especially in bright sunlight, but they’re also a real power hog. If you’re able to use your system with a slightly less ambient display, you’ll be able to use it a whole lot longer.

2) Turn off unnecessary networks

For laptops, this means not having WiFi actually on if you’re not connected to the internet; even searching for nearby networks (most of which are likely to be locked down anyway) will kill your battery quite quickly. It’s even more true for smartphone users; drop Bluetooth if you’re not using it all, WiFi likewise, and if you really want to eke out a little bit more power before you reach a wall socket, drop your phone down from 3G to GSM. You’ll sacrifice network availability this way, but it’s the simplest way to get a smartphone that might only last half a day to last two or more.

3) Remove optical discs from drives

It shouldn’t be a surprise to note that mechanical moving parts use power, and optical drives can be a particular nuisance here. If you’ve got a CD, DVD or Blu-Ray disc in your notebook drive, it’ll spin up every time the operating system thinks there’s a chance you’ll need it, in order to maximise the speed at which you can use it. This, naturally enough, uses power, but it’s also not particularly good for the disc, which is going to bounce around in your notebook while you move around.

4) Don’t forget the power saving utilities!

These vary from vendor to vendor, but most of them will offer a power-saving profile on top of Windows’ inbuilt power saving utilities. The inbuilt Windows Power utility is good, but if your notebook vendor offers a specific utility, why wouldn’t you use it? It’s more likely to be specifically fine-tuned to the hardware you’ve got in your system. Many of the fixes they implement will be tips such as screen dimming, but it’s a simple way to set up power saving, and perhaps tweak settings like hard drive spin down time to your best advantage.

5) Switch off when practical

This tip is a touch more variable depending on your needs. Most notebooks will hibernate if you close the lid, only drawing a trickle of power. This is great when your meeting finishes and you just want to get going, because you don’t have to sit through lengthy shutdown processes, and when you next need it, operating system permitting, it should boot up in seconds. Still, a trickle of power is still a trickle of power, and if you’ve got more time than power, switching off will use exactly no power at all.

ABC’s iView app spells the death of the couch potato

If you’re of a certain age, you’ll recall the mascot of the “Life Be In It’ campaign: Norm. Norm was fat, lazy, and essentially interested only in sitting in front of the TV eating pies and drinking beer. Norm was a character of the seventies, although the Life Be In It organisation that promoted him has stepped away from the Norm character in recent years for fear of emulation. For our own health, we should get up from the couch and get mobile.

A recently released application from the ABC might make the couch potato stereotype an obsolete historical oddity, offering TV in a mobile format. Sure, it’s not exactly a trip to the gym, but you’ve got to start somewhere, and TV addiction is a tough thing to beat.

For years, one of the promises of mobile television has been that it’ll be not only mobile but watchable and engaging, but for years all we’ve had is tiny little grainy screens and high data charges, making mobile TV rather off-putting. Most of the solutions have relied either on heavily compressed data or specific mobile broadcasting solutions that have so far failed to really take off.

ABC’s led the field in IP-based TV solutions with its Web-based iView catchup TV service, and last week launched an iPad version of the iView service. iPhone and Android versions are likely additions, although no timeline is promised. The application itself delivers smooth video playback across the iPad’s screen, and even on a moderate broadband connection I hit no real playback problems. The range of programs is naturally limited to the stuff that the ABC broadcasts, but there’s a wide library to pick from.

Unlike many of the stabs at mobile television of years gone past, the iView service simply uses the same internet protocols as your other internet applications (which is why it’s IPTV), so as long as your net connection stays up, so does your stream of Bananas In Pyjamas, or whatever suits your tastes. IPTV is slowly making its way worldwide as a way to deliver television services, especially as the quality of our internet connections improves. The UK equivalent of the ABC, the BBC, has announced plans to bring its iPlayer (which uses a similar technology platform to iView) to international viewers sometime next year on a subscription basis.

There are some catches for what we’ve got right now. The iView iPad application won’t run over 3G as yet, so you’re still stuck using it only in places where you have WiFi. Like many coffee shops, McDonald’s and your own home or office. Where, the thought strikes me, you’re normally sitting down and not getting all that fit.

Perhaps the couch potato isn’t quite dead yet.

Which Tablet Is Right For Me?

Apple’s iPad made a big splash when it was released earlier in the year, but up until now there hasn’t been a lot of competition in the tablet form factor. With new release products from Samsung and Telstra, though, there is finally a modicum of choice in the Tablet space.

It’s worth knowing what a Tablet can and can’t do before you plunk down your hard earned cash. They’re not exactly notebook replacements, generally being less powerful than the kind of notebook you can get for the same money. At the same time, the touch-specific interfaces they sport can be great for quick work and especially media consumption on the go or comfortably around the home. That being said, let’s take a look at the field of contenders.

Apple iPad

Price: $629-$1049 (depending on memory and 3G capability)

Why you’d want one:

Apple’s Tablet still leads the market in terms of available touch-specific applications, and if you’re already an iPhone owner, your applications can be shifted across at no charge — although some will look rather pixellated if they’ve not been iPad optimised. The 10″ screen is clear and works much better for content creation than the smaller Samsung and Telstra tablets.

Why you wouldn’t:

Apple controls all things “i” branded with an iron fist, and this means certain application categories get knocked back. There’s no direct file system access without specific hacking, and the Windows iTunes client isn’t always the most stable. Unlike the Telstra or Samsung tablets, there’s no inbuilt camera or phone functionality.

Samsung Galaxy Tab

Price: $999 or on contract

Why you’d want one:

Samsung’s Galaxy Tab is smaller than the iPad with a 7″ display screen. It runs Android 2.2, giving it a wealth of applications, has internal cameras and phone capability. The Australian released model will come with Navigon’s GPS software built in, as well as e-reader capabilities and a dedicated application for the Australian newspaper.

Why you wouldn’t:

The outright price is comparatively very high, considering you could buy the 10″ iPad in almost every configuration for the cost of the Galaxy Tab. There should shortly be contract options for the Tab from most carriers, taking some of the sting out of pricing.

Telstra T-Touch Tab

Price: $299

Why you’d want one:

Telstra’s entry level tablet is priced to go, and the price is the key appeal. It’s an Android 2.1 tablet with plenty of Telstra specific applications, inbuilt camera and an excellent inbuilt mobile Foxtel client, although that will cost you extra to access. If you just want a consumption device, it’s adequate.

Why you wouldn’t:

The T-Touch Tab uses a resistive screen that’s much harder to use than the capacitive screens found on the Galaxy Tab or iPad. Any application that requires a lot of touch will bring with it a lot of frustration, marking this out as best used for passive consumption activities, and certainly one we’d suggest you try before you buy. Some users simply cannot get on with resistive screens without the use of a stylus.  Battery life is less than a quarter of the competing pads, and it’s comparatively a little heavy.

The weak link in your security might just be you

Amongst the Twitter accounts I follow, there’s one that goes by the name of “Tweets Of Old”  (http://twitter.com/tweetsofold/). It presents ancient newspaper headlines, largely for amusement’s sake.

Late last week, the brains behind Tweets Of Old unearthed this gem:

“BEWARE! A band of confidence operators, with a spurious baking powder scheme,are roaming the vicinity, to prey upon our housewives.”

Those interested in spurious baking powder schemes can read the whole sorry story here (http://tweetsofold.com/2010/09/beware-a-band-of-confidence-operators-with-a-spurious-baking-powder-schemeare-roaming-the-vicinity-to-prey-upon-our-housewives/), but I suspect the baking powder confidence tricksters are by now long gone.

The headline dates from 1885, but it shows something that still applies today and particularly applies to technology. Back then, the technology was pretty simple stuff — a stove and some baking powder — and now the technology is much more complicated. PCs. Smartphones. Email. Web browsers. There’s all sorts of potential security holes to worry about. Having good anti-virus/anti-spyware software is a highly sensible step, but it won’t do much if the weakest link in the chain is you — and all too often it is.

Every single day I get hundreds of email entries ostensibly from Paypal, or the iTunes Music Store, or the Commonwealth Bank, or any number of recently deposed African dictators with sad stories to tell and untold wealth to share. I ignore them all, because they’re just simple scams designed to deceive (and often panic) me into clicking a link, or give up some information (such as my account login details) with a fake copy of the actual merchant store login page. There are subtle hints that give the game away, such as poor spelling, or hovering over a link to see where it redirects, but realistically the best way to combat this kind of thing is stop, take a breath, and think.

Nobody in the entire world wants to give you their millions. Sorry, but it’s true. Likewise, if your financial institution (or favourite online store) sends you a message telling you your account’s about to be suspended — or approved for thousands of dollars worth of purchases — then you’ve got a right to be concerned. Certainly, that’s sensible, but it’s equally sensible to ignore any links in emails telling you this kind of thing. Fire up a fresh web browser, manually type in the URL and log in as you usually would. If the email was genuine in the first place, you can be sure there’ll be a message waiting for you there. If there’s no message, it’s a scam, pure and simple.

Pure and simple scams have been around for hundreds of years, but they only work if we invite them to work upon us. A little forethought, and doing your own research can save you from the perils of not only the loss of cash, but also identity theft, destruction of your credit history and any number of spin-off scams and problems.

Beware Of Tech Bargains

I recently flew back from the UK, and as I waited at Heathrow Airport, I looked at the longest queue in the airport. Not for checking in, but for reclaiming VAT (the UK equivalent of GST) on items purchased within the UK. As a foreigner, you’re technically exempt from that particular tax and can claim it back when you leave the country. There was one bloke in line with a 50″ Plasma TV.

Not exactly carry-on material, your average 50″ Plasma TV, and my thoughts quickly turned to the fact that whatever VAT saving he was about to make  once he got to the front of the queue was going to be totally obliterated by excess baggage fees, and then some.

Taxes and duties do add to the prices of the technology goods we buy, but even that extreme example (which most of us wouldn’t follow) is only part of the story. Wandering through the duty free section of Sydney’s International airport on the other end of the flight, I quickly ducked past the perfume and cigarettes (neither is my thing) and had a quick look at the technology and gadgets on offer.

Most technology gear isn’t what you’d commonly call cheap. Often decent value for what you can do with it (needs permitting), but the initial outlay is often quite high. As such, you’d think the removal of taxes should lead to some real bargains.

At least from an initial glance, it isn’t exactly so. Plenty of folks around me were scooping up cigarettes like their lives depended on it (an irony in itself) but the products laid out before me were priced more like they were in a high end department store than the theoretically cheap paradise of duty free. All of them, naturally enough, had huge notices proclaiming exactly how much of a bargain they were.

It’s a pattern that’s not restricted to duty free shopping for technology, however. I’ve lost track of the number of “cheap” printers, music players, notebooks and monitors I’ve seen in any number of ordinary retail outlets that have given me pause for thought on price grounds. Sometimes the “saving” price quoted is the RRP, but it’s an RRP that nobody ever actually pays, because every other retail outlet discounts the same thing at the same rate to get customers in the door. Sometimes it’s because the item in question did sell at the stated RRP twelve months ago when it was still new, but it’s now been superseded by a newer model with better features. Somehow, the stores never make note of that fact.

Does that mean that there’s no such thing as a technology bargain? Not at all. It’s all a question of research and preparation. Most technology purchases aren’t spur of the moment matters, so knowing the real value of a product upfront is key. Price search engines such as StaticICE (www.staticice.com.au) can help with working out a reasonable price bracket for a given product before you shop, as can keeping up with the current status of a given product. If the new model has features you don’t need and the old one is really cheap, that’s the very definition of a bargain. Conversely, if you find you need the new features quickly, it’s no bargain at all.

Remote Control

For years we’ve read thousands upon thousands of words about remote working, road warriors with laptops and the paperless office. The paperless office seems more remote now than it ever has before and the advent of videoconferencing software — whether you’re at the pro telepresence end or the consumer Skype end — makes travel in these financially constrained times a lot less likely or necessary.

Still, the need exists for persistent data access for those times when you’re out of the office. There are solutions that rely on storing data and documents in the cloud (my personal choice being Dropbox), but it’s not always necessary (or prudent) to stick all your documents on somebody else’s server.

I’m writing this from a kitchen bench, far far away. In London, to be precise, but it’s being written and saved on the computer that sits at my desk in my office. And that’s a 27″ iMac. At 13.8kg, not exactly a portable computer. There was no way I was going to get away with having that as carry-on luggage, even if I’d wanted to.

A quick disclaimer: I’ve travelled to London as a guest of mobile phone company HTC for a phone launch, but that’s not germane to the point I’m going to make.

Still, I’m typing this that way, because I can. Specifically, I’m using a piece of remote access software called LogMeIn, running both on my office computer and then accessed via the web on the computer right in front of me, although it could conceivably be a tablet, iPhone or Android handset as well. LogMeIn’s not the only game in town; software from Cisco, Microsoft, VNC or Apple can handle this kind of remote computing just as well.

The advantage of remote computing versus cloud computing comes down to trust. Sure, I could stick most of the documents I actually need onto a cloud server, and either way I’d still need net access to get to them, but by accessing my computer rather than somebody else’s server, I’m guaranteed to have everything, not just some things I may or may not need. I can also do anything else I’d be able to do from that machine, such as check mail, schedule tasks — I could even, as I’ve done here, create remotely.

Netbook or Tablet?

If you want a small portable computer with a bit more screen space than a smartphone, you’re rather spoilt for choice right now. The choice as it stands currently is between the newer crop of tablet style devices epitomised by Apple’s iPad, but soon to be joined by efforts from Samsung, who recently unveiled the Galaxy Tab running Google’s Android operating system, as well as options from Asus and Toshiba.

On the other hand, you could opt for a cheap netbook. The netbook market is now a couple of years old and there’s plenty of choice on store shelves right now. So which should you opt for?

Tablets:

Upside:
They’re generally much simpler to use, because they run quite specific touch-capable operating systems, rather than Windows or Linux bolted onto smaller screens. The add-on applications markets for both Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android platforms is expanding rapidly, and most software just works rather than having to work around problems of smaller screens or lower power processors, which is a concern for netbook users.

Downside:
As they’re all screen, you’ll have to pay more for a Bluetooth or similar keyboard. Apple notably controls the Apps available for its platform, and what they can do, with an iron fist, while the upgrade nature of Android-based devices is often a little shaky.

Netbooks:

Upside:
Inbuilt keyboards give flexibility, as does the use of standard notebook/PC operating systems. Pressure from the tablet and even notebook markets has also driven prices right down, and it’s rare to see a netbook on a retail store shelf for more than $500.

Downside:
They’re not very powerful machines, and under the weight of Windows or Linux and applications, some netbooks can be very sluggish systems. The keyboards present in most netbooks are pretty cheap and very small, which won’t suit some hands.

Invariably, some users and uses will suit one over the other, and we’ll clearly see some more interesting plays in both the netbook and tablet spaces in the next twelve months. It’s well worth trying a few “store models” out before making your decision, as it’s much better to get a system that suits you rather than one you have to force to work the way you want it to.

Does Apple’s latest iPod update offer enough?

Late last week, Apple unveiled its latest update to its wildly popular iPod line, with new models of the iPod Shuffle, Nano and Touch versions. The iPod “Classic”, based around the same kind of form factor that the original iPod had nine years ago, didn’t get a refresh, but it didn’t get removed from the product lineup either. That’s probably just a matter of time, though — and it’s been a long time since Apple particularly seemed to care about the Classic.

Then again, it’s debatable that Apple’s not that interested in the low-end iPod market either. Sure, they’d still like your cash, that being the basis of any successful business, and there’s still a market for entry level players. But whether the new iPods are particularly worth chasing up, especially if you’re upgrading from an existing iPod is an interesting question. Let’s look at the iPod lines as they now stand.

I’ve never quite seen the point of the iPod Shuffle. Yes, I do understand that it plays music and works with iTunes. It’s just that, iPod branding aside, it’s never done much that other flash based players without screens didn’t do much cheaper. The new Shuffle returns buttons to the face of the player, but that’s something that Apple only got rid of with the revision before the last one!

Then there’s the Nano. The new screens look kind of cute, i’ll grant you, but this is a real tradeoff of functionality. In return for the new looks-like-an-iPhone style screen display, Apple’s ripped out the camera and the ability to play back video on the Nano completely. It’s just a music player, starting at $199, which isn’t that much cheaper than the entry level Touch.

The Touch, I will admit, has had a very nice looking makeover, grabbing the screen that makes the iPhone 4 look so good along with simple cameras on both sides, giving it access to Apple’s FaceTime video calling capability and HD video recording at 720P. It’s a nice bit of kit, but it’s not Apple’s entry level any more. It’s also rather carefully priced against the iPhone 4, which it shares a lot of functionality with.

It seems pretty clear to me that the Touch is the market that Apple wants to shift consumers towards. There’s more money to be made for Apple that way, as it gets a fixed percentage of the App sales for everything that goes onto an iPod Touch, whereas it only gets a percentage of the music sales on an iPod Shuffle or Nano if you buy your music through iTunes. Rip your own CDs — a perfectly legal activity in Australia — and Apple gets nothing.

What do you think? Are the new models enough to get you to upgrade, or will that wait until your existing player dies?

What can you do with 1TB of data?

Recent weeks have seen some immense shifts in the home broadband space in Australia. It all kicked off when Telstra announced new and surprisingly competitive plans. I say surprisingly simply because, historically speaking, Telstra’s been amongst the last of the ISPs to shift its data offerings forwards, pursuing more of the premium market (through its Next G wireless) or bundled offerings through mobile phones and landlines.

Suddenly, for less than $100, you could get 200GB of data per month, from Telstra. Competing ISPs weren’t happy, not the least because some of these prices were cheaper than they were selling wholesale to other ISPs. Many of them rely on using Telstra’s wholesale services in bulk to make their money, and if consumer rates are cheaper than wholesale rates they can’t do that.

While that plays out in the legal sphere, the other ISPs haven’t been sitting still. A week after Telstra dropped its pricing bombshell, Internode answered with plans offering 240GB.  A week later iiNet announced plans with a total of 1TB (1,000GB) per month download plans. Within hours, Primus was offering 1.1TB plans, and TPG now offers a 1TB plan as well.

Storage is cheaper than it’s ever been, but it’s a fair guess that many readers won’t have that much storage space in their entire PC. So, if relatively few users have 1Tb per month to spare, is there actually value in these plans?

To an extent – and it’s even a legal extent –  yes, there can be. The ISPs in question aren’t banking on every user on a 1TB plan using the whole 1TB per month. Like many services, they figure most users won’t go through that much, but they’ll get the money either way.

What 1TB does buy you is a fair amount of security in terms of getting shaped. You could download a month’s worth of legal download movies (from, say, iTunes) and still be within your cap. Stream an awful lot of video from those services that the given ISPs don’t already allow under the cap, catching up on as much free-to-air TV as you like.  Obviously there’s a market of people who will never need 1TB, but if you’re sitting on a plan where you consistently get shaped for the last couple of months of your plan, and it’s close to the typical $99 price point that many of these plans go for, there’s a strong argument to say that you could be doing better.

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