'Green' software saves 43,000 gallons of oil

A free piece of software that turns off PCs when they're not being used has been downloaded more than 24,000 times since its launch a month ago.

Local Cooling claims its power management software is responsible for saving 90 megawatt hours of power across all the PCs with it installed, equivalent to 43,000 gallons of oil.

However, a spokeswoman for the software developers Uniblue Systems, admitted figures for savings are purely a guess, since the software can't actually monitor for how long a PC has been turned off.

She told PCW: "Your windows settings can do exactly what Local Cooling does,  [but] more basic users weren't actually aware of Windows XP power settings anyway."

The software overrides the inbuilt Windows XP power options by automatically switching off monitors, spinning down hard disks and shutting down the entire PC after a period of inactivity.

It then lists the power usage of your individual components and calculates the power you would save based on average PC use and equates that to the number of trees or amount of oil required to create that power.

Local Cooling released the figures along with estimates of how much energy companies using the software have saved .

Local Cooling was designed by Uniblue Systems' chief technology officer so he could turn off PCs in the office automatically. The software has since been made a free download.

The program is an alternative to carbon offsetting, which has been rubbished by different organisations which claim newly planted trees emit all the carbon dioxide they absorbed when they die and rot away.

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