[mr.dan.watson]

I recently became aware of the invert colors function and the app named black light for osx. I was wondering, How can I measure the power consumption on a regular screen and an inverted colors screen? Im the kind of person who doesn't believe much without evidence, Any thoughts. Thank you

[Railroader]

Do you mean power consumption with a LCD or CRT. With a LCD you will see little to no power consumption changes. However, with a CRT, you will see quite a bit of change.

It has been theorized that if Google changed their page from a white background to a black background that a large amount of energy would be saved due to the number of people using CRT displays still.

[mr.dan.watson]

I believe an LCD, whatever my mookbook has rightnow, I want to do this because on lifehacker.com in the comment section about this, people say that this saves power but others say it doesn't. I wish there was a way to measure this.

[design219]

Originally Posted by It has been theorized that if Google changed their page from a white background to a black background that a [URL="http://ecoiron.blogspot.com/2007/01/black-google-would-save-3000-megawatts.html"

large amount of energy would be saved due to the number of people using CRT displays still.[/URL]

Wow! That is interesting.

[Dork.]

You want one of these.

ThinkGeek :: Kill-A-Watt

(There are probably other places than ThinkGeek to get them cheaper).
It will monitor how much power your device is consuming. On this particular one, you can see in real-time how much instantaneous power is being consumed, and also leave it plugged-in and running for a while so you can see how much total power the device consumes over a period of time.

[Calimus]

Originally Posted by Dork. 

You want one of these.

ThinkGeek :: Kill-A-Watt

(There are probably other places than ThinkGeek to get them cheaper).
It will monitor how much power your device is consuming. On this particular one, you can see in real-time how much instantaneous power is being consumed, and also leave it plugged-in and running for a while so you can see how much total power the device consumes over a period of time.

If you're going to test this on a macbook, I would use one of these, and boot the system up with no battery, plugged into external power(If it will do that). A much more accurate test would be on a seperate lcd monitor that has it's own power plug, then you'de know the whole difference was caused by what is on the screen.

As stated before, because of the way LCD screens work, there should be almost no difference in power consumption from inverting the colors.

[Dork.]

If you want to reduce power consumption for your LCD screen, the best thing you can do is turn down the brightness. The backlight is the single biggest consumer of power in the LCD, IIRC.