CO2Saver: Windows Power Management

Hi Todd,

Thanks for trying out CO2 Saver and commenting on our product. As Product Manager for CO2 Saver, I can shed light on the approach we took and how CO2 Saver works.

Firstly, you might be surprised how many people are not aware that Windows (any version) even HAS power management settings. When we did research and polled many Windows users, we knew that providing a tool that would easily set power options would be reaching a large group of users that didn't know this existed. If you already use built-in Windows power management, you'll see that CO2 Saver has a little less flexibility (for example, power mgmt on battery vs. AC power for laptops) but we're not trying to be all things to all people. Additionally, CO2 Saver does overcome a bug in XP that allows it to save much more energy than XP power management alone (this is mentioned in Mr. Magid's article).

The main objective of CO2 Saver is to make you aware that your machine uses an amount of electricity that has a real impact to the production of Carbon Dioxide by power plants. Although you can't see what a pound of CO2 looks like, in relative terms it's useful to read how much CO2 you and the other CO2 Saver users are saving by using power management. In the future, we'll show what your savings are equivalent to (for example x pounds = 1 average car's CO2 output per year).

It's also a way to build a type of community of CO2 Saver users who want to work 'together' to build those numbers as high as they can. For the partners we've signed up (such as Earth911 and Oceana.org), their users are excited to see how much they can collectively save. This is something you can't do using Windows power mgmt alone.

Finally, you asked why we made Google the default search engine. The first and foremost reason is that this product is not about making money. Snap's founder, Bill Gross, is a pioneer in the alternative energy field and is also the CEO of Energy Innovations, an innovative solar power company seated about 50 feet away from myself and the rest of the Snap employees. Bill knew that he could help make people aware of their excess CO2 usage and help them reduce it, and this program was something we jammed on to build and launch by Earth Day 2007 (April 21). Bill thought that more people would rather choose Google (or Yahoo, or others) as their default search engine, if they had to select one, because they might be more familiar with Google than Snap. Someday, I hope it will be the other way around ;)

Anyway, I hope this explains why we made the choices we did when developing this product. We understand it's not for everyone, but even the press alone helps build people's awareness of the environmental impacts their computers have when they run when unnecessary, and we're proud to be a part of that awareness.

Cheers,
Brian Heffley
CO2 Saver Product Manager
Snap.com / CO2Saver.org