Monitoring your laptop power

Nowadays, we’re all concerned about reducing our power usage and carbon footprint.

As I’ve previously blogged, faster computers use more power. What you may not realise is that busy computers do as well; most modern computers (laptops especially) are good about slowing down the CPU when it’s not heavily used which reduces its power consumption and cooling requirements.

The good news is that Microsoft Research have released a free tool called Joulemeter (which is somewhat of a misnomer, since it measures Watts not Joules), which can provide information about your computer’s power usage.

It requires Windows 7, and unless you have a USB external power meter it’s probably only useful for a laptop – but for the energy concious amongst us, it’s still useful information, though not as detailed as it could be just yet..