It's Green...with a hint of orange! http://www.jaffacake.net/ en-us Wed, 22 Oct 2008 19:12:14 +0100 Wed, 22 Oct 2008 19:12:14 +0100 http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/ripserver Domestic Gadgets Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/ripserver?opendocument&comments http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/ripserver Ripfactory Ripserver.

If, on the other hand, you want the easiest, greenest, simplest way to rip your music...you've come to the right place.

The Ripfactory Ripserver is almost unique in the marketplace. It's not exactly sold as a NAS device, but it can quite happily be used as one. Many end users don't know what a NAS is or even what the acronym stands for. They don't want to worry about complex things like RAID, file systems or user permissions. All they want is somewhere to store their digital music so they can easily access it from their digital music system like Sonos and if they buy the Ripserver, they've got one.

The Ripserver isn't really sold directly as a music server, but it certainly is one and a powerful one too. It supports Sonos, Firefly, SqueezeCenter, DLNA, UPNP and is even iTunes server compatible. What all this means is that, whichever digital music playback solution you decide to purchase, the Ripserver is likely to support it.

What the Ripserver has, that most other comparable NAS devices don't, is a CD slot...and this is what puts it head and shoulders ahead of the competition.

Do you understand CD ripping? Do you know how to tag your tracks with Artist/Title information? Do you know how to locate and insert the album sleeve artwork into your music files? Do you know how to install different codecs onto your PC? Do you know how to rip your CDs into 2 different codecs at the same time? The Ripserver does.

This device can only be described as "Simple" with a capital S. You simply take it out of the box, patch it into your internet router, connect the included power supply and start it up. Once booted, there's a little beep to let you know the device is ready - a good job really, it's so quiet that sometimes you might even wonder if it's turned on.

Now all you need to do is configure the device...oh, maybe not. The device comes preconfigured with the required network shares and, all being well, will just appear on your network. No complex configuration required you can simply tap http://ripserver into the browser on your PC and your looking at the rip settings. Here you can easily choose what codec in which you wish to rip your music. A lossless codec like FLAC is the best option for future use, but it may not work with some portable players. Ripserver allows you to rip your music into both FLAC and mp3 at the same time. I told you it was easy.

No complex menus or difficult user interfaces, things are kept nice and simple, you only need to see this screen once. Once you've chosen your desired codecs, from a healthy list of the most common choices, you're good to go.

Insert a CD into the slot and there's a little beep then the disc starts to read. That's all you need to do, unless you want to go and put the kettle on. When it's done with it, the device smoothly ejects the disc ready for the next one. That's it....all you need to do. In fact, if you have a child, nephew, niece or neighbour handy and they want to earn some extra pocket money...it's all they have to do. Disc in, disc out. Disc in, disc out. It's easier than making toast.

But what's happening in the background during all this? Well, the Ripserver is...
1) Identifying the artist/title/album name/genre of your CD...
2) extracting all the digital data from the CD...
3) Converting that digital data into individual files, one for each track...
4) Tagging each track with the correct Artist/Title/Album/Genre...
5) Downloading album sleeve artwork for that album...
6) Inserting the album artwork into each trackfile, so it appears on your player...
7) Saving a copy of the artwork into the music folder, so windows will display it in explorer...
8) Creating an Artist Name\Album Name\Track folder structure...
9) Doing all of the above twice...once for each codec.

But you don't need to worry about all that as it's completely seamless to the end user you just rip a disc and then play it on your music player. It's all there and just works. The only quirk I found is that sometimes the data in the online database is slightly inaccurate. For example, an album I ripped by Dina Carroll was identified as "rock" music. Far from it really, but this is always the danger of using public online databases and not an issue unique to Ripserver in any way.

So why is Ripserver better than a PC/Mac with iTunes installed? Well, for a start it's far simpler. You simply insert the disc and wait. Nothing to click, nothing to mess up.

On top of that, the album art handling is massively better. iTunes does download art, but only in a way that is compatible with your iPod. It's no use for 3rd party music players like Sonos or Squeezbox.

iTunes can only rip in one codec at a time, so if you want a copy of the CD in lossless alongside an mp3 copy, then you have to do it twice.

Also, with iTunes, if you shut down or reboot your PC, the music stops. Ripserver is designed to run 24/7 with minimal power consumption.

When I say minimal, I mean a power consumption of just 27 watts at idle. Even during concurrent ripping/encoding it only manages to draw 33 watts...less than half that of my Infrant ReadyNAS - and considerably more powerful too, the 1GHz processor on the Ripserver packs quite a punch. Performance of heavyweight NAS applications is equivalent to that seen on my full sized PCs whereas the same software really struggles to perform on the ReadyNAS. This makes the Ripserver an ideal choice to couple with the Logitech Squeezebox Duet which needs a fairly weighty machine to run it's Squeezecenter software.

Hardware wise, a quick look under the lid confirms that this unit doesn't even contain a fan, so the only noise comes from the hard disk itself which has been securely seated in the chassis so there are no vibrations. To put this into perspective, I hid the unit under the bed one night before my wife came home. She slept above it all night without noticing any noise whatsoever. Unlike most NAS devices, this unit will not give you any intrusive background noise.

For a pretty technical guy, I'm finding it really hard to say how easy this device is to use. To put it simply, if any of the technical details above are too complicated for you and you just don't understand...then Ripserver is the solution for you. ]]> http://www.jaffacake.net/dxcomments/ripserver http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/ripserver?opendocument&comments Sat, 23 Aug 2008 11:00:57 +0100 http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/Infrant-ReadyNAS-NV-1GB Domestic Gadgets Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/Infrant-ReadyNAS-NV-1GB?opendocument&comments http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/Infrant-ReadyNAS-NV-1GB
For many, this would have no use whatsoever - but if you want an easy way to access your stored music, videos or photos without having to keep a PC whirring 24 hours a day then it can come in quite handy.


As, for numerous reasons, I have pretty serious storage demands I upgraded to the Infrant ReadyNAS about a year ago. This allows internal space for up to 4 hard drives to be added - in my case 4 x 1.0TB Hitachi drives giving me around 3000GB of usable space in a RAID5 configuration.

Clearly with 4 big hard drives, power consumption isn't going to be as low as it might be but just how much power does the ReadyNAS use?

I shut the system down, probably the first time in about a year, connected up the power tester and booted it back up. On standby, before I turned on the device properly, we registered a 2-3 Watt power draw from the supply, around 0.04amps.

One touch of the power button and it jumped up to 36 Watts, then 38 Watts. The hard drives are initialised one at a time, initially drawing a huge amount of power and then taking less as they get up to speed. The power meter started climbing, 45W, 56W, 61W, 66W, 70W, 76W, between all of these measurements dropping back down a little.

All drives initialised and fully booted, the ReadyNAS draws a total of 67 Watts, about half that of a basic PC of the same age. Not too bad really from a device holding 4000GB of drives. With the use of more modern "green" hard disks, this figure could be a little lower too.

But how will it compare in our Olympic final of NAS drives when put up against the Buffalo Terastation and Ripfactory Ripserver? Stay tuned... ]]> http://www.jaffacake.net/dxcomments/Infrant-ReadyNAS-NV-1GB http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/Infrant-ReadyNAS-NV-1GB?opendocument&comments Fri, 22 Aug 2008 17:12:46 +0100 http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/Panasonic-TX-32PK20 Domestic Gadgets Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/Panasonic-TX-32PK20?opendocument&comments http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/Panasonic-TX-32PK20


There's a lot of information in the press about  how devices, like old televisions, use a lot of power on standby. They claim modern TVs are much better in this regard, but are these claims true? Or is it a big eco-hoax to get you to buy a new TV?

Well lets look at the results for my old CRT then.

Plugged up, turned on and warmed up a little we get a pretty constant power consumption of 110 Watts. For future comparison, with little statistical meaning whatsoever, we'll also record this as 3.44 Watts per inch of display. We'll compare this to other screens around the house.

But how well does it perform on standby? I bought this TV back in summer '99 making it 9 years old. Not old old but far from young. Green crusaders claims that TVs can use around 20% of there power on standby. A quick press on the remote red button, ker click, and the relay switches off leaving just the red standby light. Last chance to get your guess in...

On standby, the 32" Panasonic TV gives us a power consumption figure of... ONE WATT! It's not exactly the big 20% figure we might have expected though is it? Of course, most people have a TV and if just 2000 homes leave there appliance on standby it's equivalent to boiling a kettle. I'm still pushing the merits of turning it off at the wall but I'll admit that I'm surprised the standby power consumption was so low. ]]> http://www.jaffacake.net/dxcomments/Panasonic-TX-32PK20 http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/Panasonic-TX-32PK20?opendocument&comments Fri, 22 Aug 2008 16:31:41 +0100 http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/a-green-wedding News Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/a-green-wedding?opendocument&comments http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/a-green-wedding


We had a fantastic day (the bridesmaids, groomsmen and even the cake were dressed in the theme green colour) followed by a 3 week Honeymoon including a city break tour of Europe...not by plane though. Instead of doing numerous eco questionable flights within Europe, we drove the full distance in a hybrid vehicle. The results were rather impressive and, based on the journey, it's safe to say the hybrid model is easily 10-15mpg better than it's standard petrol equivalent.

Thanks to all those of you who dropped me a line to ask if everything is OK and check if the site is still live, it certainly is. In fact, according to my meter, it's running at 244volts...time to do some testing :) ]]> http://www.jaffacake.net/dxcomments/a-green-wedding http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/a-green-wedding?opendocument&comments Tue, 6 May 2008 17:55:45 +0100 http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/sonoszp80 Domestic Gadgets Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/sonoszp80?opendocument&comments http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/sonoszp80  
Surely something is wrong, there's no way this unit could have a power consumption of <1W when on standby?

I was right, something was wrong...the flashing white light on the unit confirmed the unit was still booting up and wasn't at full consumption just yet.



The Sonos ZP80 ZonePlayer is the baby brother of the Sonos ZP100 that I tested in a previous review here on Jaffa's Green Blog. Gone are the 50W amplifier, speaker bindings and large size, replaced by a tiny little case with just audio outputs to feed into powered speakers or your existing hifi. For those who prefer a higher quality link, both co-ax and optical digital outputs are supplied.

The ZP80 followed 2 years after the launch of the ZP100 ZonePlayer after numerous owners had requested a small form factor device with digital outputs for connecting to their existing hifi or home cinema systems.

In theory, with a smaller power supply, it's likely to save power too...although it still contains all the same SonosNet wireless mesh technology, ethernet switch and Linux based internal software.

So how did it compare to it's big brother in the power consumption tests? Read on...



In standby mode, not playing any music at all, the Sonos ZP80 unit is reporting a standby power consumption of an extremely green 3 Watts. That means the maximum 32 zone players you can have in a single household will still consume less than a 100 Watt light bulb. Not bad at all, and ideal for solar power applications. This is almost half the ZP100 consumption.

How does this change when the unit starts playing? Well, I quickly queued up "The Power" by Snap! to find out.

With the unit set to a fixed (constant volume) line-out, we get a reading that fluctuates gently between 3 and 4 Watts...probably more 4 Watts than 3. Switching to a variable line out didn't use or save any electricity, so we're a variance of about 1 Watt between standby and normal use. Simply turning off your washing machine when not in use will offset the electricity burned by this device in use, now that's what I call an eco friendly appliance.

But how does it compare to the competition? I was asked in my ZP100 review if I had a Logitech Squeezebox Duet Receiver I could use for comparison. Well, now I have one to hand so should be able to publish the results in the near future. Stay tuned. ]]> http://www.jaffacake.net/dxcomments/sonoszp80 http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/sonoszp80?opendocument&comments Fri, 2 May 2008 16:17:47 +0100 http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/tassimo Domestic Gadgets Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/tassimo?opendocument&comments http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/tassimo wrote about a new drinks maker called Tassimo.

Three years later and the device is far from new but still well marketed. It's still one of the more popular 'pod' style drinks makers and I'm actually on my second device as the previous one died a horrible death sometime earlier this year. It still worked, but wouldn't stop boiling the water randomly. We declared it unsafe, threw it in the trash, took a good look at other alternatives and ended up buying the same again.



Interestingly, before I bought the first unit, I read a few reviews that said the Tassimo made good drinks but many reviewers, including myself, commented that the Hot Chocolate had an unusual chemical after taste. Over the period of ownership I'd forgotten about this and assumed I'd got used to it. When we purchased the replacement unit, sadly the original was out of warranty, I noticed a return of the after-taste. I can only assume this is a "new" taste which goes away with time as the solvents used to clean the device in the factory are rinsed away.

Pod style hot drinks makers have some real added convenience. As you only boil enough water for one cup, making a drink is quick and easy. The system heats a pre-defined amount of water in it's boiler and then pumps it at pressure through the Tassimo T-Disc which brews and dispenses coffee, tea, hot chocolate or even frothy milk.

Of course, from the perspective of the eco conscious, heating just enough hot water is a lot more energy efficient...or is it? What is the power consumption of the Tassimo coffee maker? This is why you read Jaffa's Green Blog.



Using the in-line meter that we used in previous test, we were able to measure the amount of power it takes to make a standard cup of coffee. For the purposes of testing, and retesting, I actually used the cleaning disc that was supplied with the unit. This probably heats the water a little hotter than some of the drinks but also removes most of the variables from the test, such as the amount of coffee in the disc might affect the results. Using the empty test disc should allow consistent, repeatable results.

I turned the unit on at the wall and it entered standby mode at a current draw of 0.01 Amps, some 3 Watts on our UK supply voltage. I inserted the disc and the unit registered the closure of the lid and started heating the water at a rate of 1600 Watts. Incidentally the water came from the on-board reservoir where it had been overnight, safe to say it was room temperature.

The water heated at 1600 Watts until the target temperature was reached and the green READY light illuminated. It dropped back to standby consumption of 3 Watts and the total energy used was 0.02 kWh which wasn't increased when the button was pressed and the 14 Watt pump dispensed the drink.

After dispensing a drink, the instructions tell you to remove the disc. In fact, if you don't, it can get a bit sticky with the concentrated hot chocolate disc left in there for a while - so this is good practice. Interestingly though, the machine has a mind of it's own and so, when you remove the disc, it assumes you're going to make another drink. To save time, it starts pre-heating the water. Energy use shoots back up to 1600 Watts for around 15seconds and the total consumption rises to 0.03 kWh, an extra 50% consumption, for a drink you're not going to make!

To confirm this, I reinserted the T-disc and the READY light instantly lit showing that the unit had pre-heated enough water for the next cup. It didn't use as much energy as last time as there was still water left over from the last run...the unit always heats a bit extra to allow the cups to be topped up if you're drinking from a larger beaker and would rather have a bigger drink.

In case you're wondering, after dispensing the second drink, I removed the disc - again the boiler kicked in to heat more water. Each time you use the unit, you're wasting 0.01kWh of energy for that extra cup you will never make. When you're only making one cup, that a 50% waste. but obviously the proportion of inefficiency decreases as you make more drinks in one session. Of course, if you were making a lot of drinks, you would probably just put the kettle on!

Talking of which, how does a kettle compare? Well, this is what testing is all about....

I removed the Tassimo water reservoir from the unit and tipped the room temperature water into a spare room temperature mug identical to that used in the Tassimo testing. I ensured that the water level of cold water was the same as the amount of hot dispensed by Tassimo. I then poured this water into an empty kettle, a modern kettle with a concealed element in the base.

The first thing I noticed was that the water level was below the minimum allowed on the kettle measure, so I had to top it up to 300ml, Tassimo brewed approximately 250ml. Once topped up, I replaced the lid and connnected up my energy meter.

Standby consumption was zero...when this kettle is off...it's off. I then turned it on to boil, 2200 Watts of energy were used in the process which, with only the bare minimum, was surprisingly quick. I left the unit going until it clicked off automatically, in reality it had been boiling for 10secs or so before this happened, so energy consumption was more than it should have been...as was the case with Tassimo. In fact, Tassimo doesn't even boil the water as it's not required for it's drinks.

End result for the kettle was 0.04 kWh, a little more than the Tassimo for a little more water to be heated a little hotter. So, not much to choose between them really and improvements could be made on both products. The kettle could have cut out a little earlier. Tassimo could, and for eco reasons should, start pre-heating the water only when a new disc in inserted in the machine. Wasting 0.01 kWh of energy each time just in case you want another cup is unacceptable. In fact, if I leave the energy meter connected whilst unattended, I slowly see the energy creep up for no reason. From time to time it just appears to switch on the boiler for a few seconds, you can hear it gurgling and occasionally water will drip down the overflow into the drip tray.

So what's the most efficient way of making your drink? Well a cold drink from the tap would save 0.03 kWh per cup! ]]> http://www.jaffacake.net/dxcomments/tassimo http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/tassimo?opendocument&comments Sat, 5 Apr 2008 11:22:14 +0100 http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/zanussi30degs Domestic Appliances Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/zanussi30degs?opendocument&comments http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/zanussi30degs
This refers to your washing machine and using programmes at lower temperatures. The days of the boil wash are pretty much gone and most people spend their time doing wash loads at 40 degrees Celcius. Modern detergents claim that they work just as well at 30 degrees and that by turning down to the lower temperature that the power saved would be enough to save the planet. If everybody in the UK turned down to thirty we'd save enough power to light all the homes in Belgium, or something like that.

But how true are these claims? Will turning down to 30 really save a significant amount of power, or will it just sell a load of compatible detergent?


Over the past few weeks we've been doing some electricity consumption tests here on Jaffa's Green Blog. This involves washing an identical load of towels, and drying them, in our resident Zanussi Jetstream Washer dryer. Obviously there's electricity used not just to heat the water, but also to turn the drum and drive the water pump

Initially we washed at the modern standard 40 degrees, which give us a benchmark figure for the power consumption. Washing and drying the towels consumed a total energy measurement of 2.67kWh. Obviously this figure would vary a little depending on how much laundry you had in the washtub. Larger loads may need less water, but would take more drying. This is why we only used the same towels in each test.

On week 2 we washed at 50 degrees, preferred by some as they claim it gets their clothes a little cleaner. Total power consumption was a surprising 2.76kWh...just 0.09kWh difference. Not as much difference as we expected and it didn't look good for when we did our 30 degree test.

So, week 3 is upon us and we did our usual washload. Standard measurements of detergent and fabric conditioner, along with our water softener tablet. A couple of hours later and the results were in..beep beep beep. Not quite sure why the Zanussi has to beep for quite so long but it is handy to remind you to go and take a meter reading.

30 degrees - 2.41kWh.

Yeah, I was surprised too. Whilst increasing by 10 degrees from 40 to 50 just used an extra 0.09kWh, we save a whole 0.26kWh by turning down to 30. It doesn't take a mathematical genius to work out that this was a 10 percent saving in power consumption. In real terms, that a saving of around 137 grammes of CO2 output. That's about the same emission as driving an average family car for a mile.

So for every wash load you do at 30 degrees, instead of 40, you offset the CO2 output of driving your 2.0 litre VW Golf for one mile. It's easier than planting trees! ]]> http://www.jaffacake.net/dxcomments/zanussi30degs http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/zanussi30degs?opendocument&comments Fri, 28 Mar 2008 18:01:30 +0100 http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/sonoszp100 Domestic Gadgets Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/sonoszp100?opendocument&comments http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/sonoszp100 poses the question "How Green is your music?".

He exposes details of his own system which incorporates various components but what caught my eye was his use of the Sonos Digital Music System. I use this Sonos multi-room system myself in several areas of the house so it was on my list of gadgets to test but, as Alan doesn't have exist power consumption figures himself, I thought it was time to bump it up the list and get it tested.



I got some surprising results...



The ZP100 ZonePlayer was the first product release by Sonos back in 2003. It's a wireless music system that will playback digital music stored on your PC allowing you to play it and control it all over the house. If you've ripped all your music from CD for an mp3player but still can't hear it in the kitchen, Sonos is the solution and you won't need to drill any holes.

In standby mode, the 50W per channel amplifier is off and the unit is just listening for wireless communications from the handheld controller or other ZonePlayers you may have scattered around the house. This makes the unit as power efficient as possible.

Plugging our in-line electricity meter between Sonos and the wall outlet, we can measure it's power consumption in the different modes.

In standby mode, with just the wifi adapter listening, Sonos (running on a measured 244v/49.9Hz outlet) draws 0.04 amps, a power use of just 5watts.

I selected my favourite track of the moment on the Sonos controller and playback started immediately and the extra power draw was immediately visible. But it wasn't a lot..considerably less than you might think. Being a 50 watts per channel amplifier I was, possibly naively, expecting this unit to draw 100W or more. But no...

Music playing at a reasonable volume through the speakers I could clearly see a power consumption of just 12 watts. I hit the 'mute' button on the front of the unit and consumption immediately dropped straight back to the standby power of 5 watts...although occasionally it clicked onto 6W which showed it was slightly busier doing background tasks. I thought I'd play around with some different volume levels to see if power consumption was affected.

Starting at completely zero volume, i see a comsumption of just 5 watts. As soon as I engage one tiny bar of volume, the amplifier kicks in and jumps to 12 watts. At 25% volume...12watts. At 50% volume...12watts. At 75% volume...12 watts. But a couple of bars after 75%, the power consumption levels escalated considerably...as did the pain in my ears! By the time we reached 100% volume we're using some 48 watts of electricity at peak, although it fluctuated wildly around the 40-50watts range. It seems that whilst power consumption was rock solid all the way up the power range, at the top end it really got a bit wild. But so did the sound...

I noticed that at max volume I was getting a lot of distortion and it just sounded terrible. I know Sonos has a good quality amplifier so I wondered why for a few moments and then realised I was playing back a very low bitrate (poor quality) 128kbps mp3 file. Could this poor quality file really be causing the erratic power consumption?

95% of my collection, over 12,000 songs approaching 300GB, is ripped in the Apple Lossless codec. This gives some compression whilst completely retaining the exact CD quality, it's in the options in iTunes if you're interested. So I queued up another song or two that I knew I had ripped in the lossless codec. To my absolute amazement, it made a difference.

Zero volume - 5 Watts. 25% - 12 Watts. 50%, -12 Watts. 75%  - 12 Watts. And then we broke the 75% barrier...and almost nothing happened. At maximum volume, with crystal clear stereo sound and zero distortion, we pulling just 19 Watts...PEAK. The power consumption actually, wavered around the 15-20 Watts range, but never actually hit 20 Watts.

So at higher volume levels, we're talking less than HALF the power consumption when using high quality source files instead of mp3.

Go Green...Go Lossless!

Edit: OK, this may not be entirely true...that the codec affects consumption. Read the comments below for more info!

Shortly I'll be measuring power consumption of the other Sonos components, the ZP80 ZonePlayer and the CR100 controller, the results will be right here on jaffacake.net ]]> http://www.jaffacake.net/dxcomments/sonoszp100 http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/sonoszp100?opendocument&comments Fri, 28 Mar 2008 09:24:43 +0100 http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/cellphones Hints & Tips Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/cellphones?opendocument&comments http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/cellphones
On a daily basis, I use a Nokia E90 Communicator. It's a powerful piece of kit, 2 large colour LCD screens, stereo sound...everything you need to really drain some power. It has a large high capacity battery to compensate, but battery power isn't free...it needs to be recharged. Obviously the longer you can make the battery last between recharges, the better.

Most people know that functions like Bluetooth drain the battery a little quicker, especially on older phones that adopted the technology in it's early days. Turning Bluetooth off can saves some battery life but, in reality, it's impractical to keep turning if off/on as needed. You don't want to be driving down the road, hear the phone ring and then realise that you're not connected to your car kit.

You can change the timeout settings on your phone display so the backlight turns out quicker, saving a bit more battery life. In theory it's sound, in practice it means you're going to be pushing buttons to wake the thing back up again before you've finished reading the long joke you received on a txt message. So another option that isn't really so practical.

So how can we really safe battery life? Apart from silly ideas like using it less, disabling vibration and turning it off when it's not in use.

Let's go back to 3G...



3G, or UMTS as some of the geeks may refer to it, is the 3rd generation in mobile phones. First we had those awful analog bricks, then GSM came along and we went all digital with clearer phone calls. With 3G we get exactly the same except we gain a high speed data link. This is useful for picking up emails, surfing the net and other data services. It's also used for video calling at something like £1.50 per minute. But how often do you actually use it?

Does it help with phone calls? No. In fact, 3G has less coverage than GSM which usually means your signal strength is less. In fact, you might find your phone disconnects from 3G to make a phone call.

Does it help with txt messaging? No. In fact many phones, as with a voice call, will drop the 3G connect to send a txt message.

One of the things that really hammers battery life on a phone is connecting to the local mobile phone base station. During this fairly lengthy negotiation a lot of data is sent and received. If you're travelling in a car or on a train, this re-connection can occur every couple of minutes which is why you'll find your battery is really hammered after a long journey.

On a 3G phone, this negotiation is usually doubled as it first connects to the GSM connection and then, when it finds an available 3G source, it upgrades the connection with another hefty negotiation. Sending or receiving a txt drops and re-establishes this connection hammering the phone some more. If you have delivery reports enabled, all this traffic is doubled.

So why do I need it? Well, maybe you don't...

Do you regularly pick up email on your phone? Do you browse the web on your phone? Do you use video calling? If not, you can just go into your phone options and disable 3G. This won't break anything and even things like browsing m.facebook.com will be pretty much unaffected as the GPRS function on the old 2G/GSM service will be perfectly adequate for mobile optimised "WAP" services.

I disabled 3G on my phone over the easter break...I've not charged it since. I'm getting at least DOUBLE the battery life, purely because I turned off this network function for which I have no use. This is not only very green, it's convenient too as you don't have to put your phone on the charger so often.

So dig out those phone menus, turn off 3G and watch as your battery doesn't go down like it did. Add a comment if you find this tip has worked for you. ]]> http://www.jaffacake.net/dxcomments/cellphones http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/cellphones?opendocument&comments Thu, 27 Mar 2008 10:18:46 +0100 http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/zanussi50degs Domestic Appliances Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/zanussi50degs?opendocument&comments http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/zanussi50degs I washed the towels at 40 degrees Celsius. As you may remember, washing and drying the set of cotton towels in a 40 degree wash used 2.67kWh of electricity.

How will it compare if we raise the temperature to 50 degrees? Clearly we'll need to raise the water temperature by another 10 degrees so it's going to use more power, but how much?



As with last week's test, I fully cleaned out the washer filter before the test. In doing so, I noticed a bit of white sludgy powder residue in the filter. This happens from time to time and, as we use detergent liquid, it can't be washing powder. It's actually undisolved water softener tablets. This happens a lot with cheap own brand tablets like the ones from Tesco. They often leave some residue in the soap drawer too. We only bought the Tesco brand once, but we're still using them up. I recommend you only use good branded softener tablets, e.g. Calgon, or just use very cheap, very pure, soda crystals as Keith Milner suggested in the comments last week. Another tip is to ensure that the softener tablet is always placed right to the back of the soap drawer. This ensures a good water flow over the tablet ensuring it gets dissolved as well as possible.

As clearly there were softener deposits in the bottom of the washing machine drum, I decided it was time to perform a maintenance wash. This involves performing a "boil wash" on an empty load. The traditional boil wash is actually 90 degrees these days, people used to actually use boiling water back in hand wash times. So, having unloaded the towels, I set the washer to do a 'quick' 90 degree Celsius cotton wash with maximum 1600rpm spin and pushed start.

The same processes kicked in as last week, but this time there was a little more water intake. Clearly there is no laundry in the drum and the cycle fills to a pre-determined level. With no volume from the laundry, the only way to fill the washer is with water...cold water...that needs to heat to 90 Celsius. This was going to eat some juice.

Cycle complete, the meter told me the power consumed...1.71kWh. That's pretty much two thirds of what it cost to wash and dry the towels at 40 degrees. Ouch. Whilst the odd boil wash is essential to keep everything all nice and fresh, you can certainly see why they should be avoided where possible.

But what about the cost of the 50 degree wash? Well, the three towels 'store dry' exactly as they were last week, but washed at 50 degrees instead of 40, had a total power consumption of...2.76kWh. An almost negligible difference of some 0.09kWh, that's about 1 pence extra at today's electricity rates. In fact, as we can't guarantee that the water intake temperatures were exactly equal in both tests then the difference may be even closer...or potentially further away...but I'd say 1 penny is about right.

How can they be so close? Well, the scientists amongst us will remember something from school about the rate of a reaction related to temperature. Those with a good memory may even remember something about Q10 and it being related to enzymes. Of course, enzymes are used in modern detergents to allow us to wash at lower temperatures and still kill bacteria and remove stains. This makes the Q10 reaction theory highly appropriate. I'm going to quote from the National Centre for Biological Education at Reading University in the UK.

"Consider high temperature/rapid processing. The Q1O rule states that for every 10 °C rise in temperature, the enzyme will react twice as fast. Of course, this is only true up to a point i.e., until the enzyme is denatured, but substantial catalysis can still be achieved in a short time if lesson timing demands it e.g., washing powder proteases can clear particular types of photographic film in just five minutes at 65 °C."

So raising the temperature just 10 degrees can double the rate of reaction. So we have to use more electricity to heat the water but, once it's there, the clothes will become clean quicker and a shorter cycle time can be used. A shorter cycle means less power, less drum rotation, less wear on the washing machine and less time to keep the water warm.

So, washing at 50 degrees Celsius doesn't appear to use a significant amount more electricity. It also get your clothes cleaner.

Next week we'll be washing at 30 degrees to compare but stay tuned until then whilst I measure some smaller appliances around the house like the kettle, toaster etc. ]]> http://www.jaffacake.net/dxcomments/zanussi50degs http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/zanussi50degs?opendocument&comments Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:45:24 +0100 http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/zanussi Domestic Appliances Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/zanussi?opendocument&comments http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/zanussi


We disconnected the unit from the mains supply and between the plug and the supply socket we inserted our electricity meter device. We then switched on the mains supply again making the unit live.

On the front of the display is a large yellow ON/OFF button. Pushing the button in turns the unit on, pushing again turns it off and all the lights go out. But is it really off? Our meter says it isn't.


Most modern devices contain a micro-processor which controls the device and all it's functions. It's effectively a mini computer, but you don't get a conventional keyboard and screen. Unless the unit is fully switched at the main supply this micro-processor is often live at all times...the 'standby' mode we all read about in the press.

With the Zanussi switch clearly in the off position and no visible power lights, our system was still drawing a small current from the mains. Low, but definitely measurable. The current draw was displayed at 0.02amps which, on a 243.8v supply, worked out to be the equivalent of 1W (note we're using official watts here, not VA). 1watt may not seem a lot but, if you put this into perspective, just 2000 machines in a small town, all 'turned off' are using enough power to boil a kettle.

Almost every household owns a washing machine, how often do you turn yours off at the wall?

Come to think of it, how often do you leave the washer machine turned on at the end of a cycle? If you do, it's using 5 times as much electricity...up to 5watts (10VA) are being used whilst the machine is sat at the end of a cycle without being turned off. We're now talking just 400 machines to boil a kettle. We've not even loaded any clothes yet and our electricity meter is already ticking along nicely.

For comparative purposes, I've decided to use the household bath towels. Each week, we will use 2 full size cotton bath sheets; Mrs. jaffa also uses an additional hand tower for her hair. These 3 towels go in the washer dryer in a single load and are washed at 40 degrees and then dried. The press are asking us to turn down to 30 degrees, but I still like to turn them up to 50 to get that 'really clean' feeling. Additionally, the washer offers 2 main modes of "quick" or "AA", the latter taking significantly longer but apparently getting the clothes much cleaner. We like our 50 degreee AA wash, but how 'green' is it? Are we using an excessive amount of electricity in this mode? Over the coming weeks, we'll be washing our towels in these different modes and comparing the results.

For our initial benchmark, we're going for a 'quick' 40 degree cotton wash, 1600rpm spin speed (the max for this model) and choosing the 'store dry' option on the drying programme.

Within each wash we always include a Calgon tablet, this reduces limescale build up inside the machine making it more efficient and reducing breakdowns. If you aren't using one, you should be. Whilst some water softeners are included in your detergent, you're obliged to use more detergent in your wash to account for hard water. With the use of a softener tablet in each load, you can use just the soft water amount of detergent, reducing the amount of chemicals that end up going down the drain at the end of the wash.

We used supermarket own brand wash liquid form detergent and a dose of fabric conditioner for the rinse cycle. Don't worry, modern fabric conditioners are safe to use on towels.

To ensure our future results are as consistent as possible, I also completely cleaned the washing machine filter before starting the programme. This task should be performed at least weekly to remove all the lint that collects and reduce load on the drain pump.

Towels loaded, programme selected we hit the start button. The first thing the unit did was engage the drain pump to remove any water left over from the previous wash. This create a momentary load of around 900W, but only for 5-10secs. Then the inlet was opened and the unit started to fill with cold water.

After some water had been taken in, the drum spun slightly using around 30-50 watts in the process. Being a fairly modern machine, it does this to assess the amount of laundry in the wash drum and determine how much water is required. After juggling with the towels for a few spins in each direction, it then fills with the computed amount of water.

Modern washers are considerably more water efficient. This Zanussi only has a small amount of water in the drum during washing and as the drum rotates, the clothing is blasted with a water jet...hence the name Jetsystem. Gone are the days where you see the water level rising up the window in the door and socks floating around.

Whilst the drum filled with water, drum stationery, the washer used a constant 22Watts of power. Once full, the drum starts tumbling again and the heater kicks in. For this programme it needs to get mains supply water (approx 10 celcius) to warm up to 40 degrees. The heater unit draws some 10amps, a power consumption of 2300 watts in this process which took over 20 mins. This is a direct equivalent to having your kettle on for 20 minutes whilst not even boiling the water. Needless to say that even modern washers use a lot of water. I may even measure water consumption during a future wash cycle.

The washing programme selected took less than an hour, using around 120W during that time to rotate the drum and maintian water temperature. Including the drying, the whole cycle is around 2.5hrs. The drying is where the power really goes, using 1960W for around an hour and a half.

The end result is a total measured power consumption of 2.67KWh and a set of dry towels. Cost for this will vary with your electricity supplier but current costs are approximately 10 pence per unit plus tax. It's fair to say that this wash cost around 30 pence of electricity, so we're spending over £15 a year just to wash the towels for 2 people each week.

We're using over 130 KWh of electricity each year just for our weekly towel cycle. Could we reduce this by selecting a different programme on our washer? Does turning down to 30 really help reduce power consumption? Watch this space... ]]> http://www.jaffacake.net/dxcomments/zanussi http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/zanussi?opendocument&comments Tue, 18 Mar 2008 18:00:00 +0100 http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/welcome News Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/welcome?opendocument&comments http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/welcome
Launching soon, Jaffa's Green Blog will be investigating some of the facts and myths surrounding domestic energy consumption.

A plug-in device might save you power when an appliance is left on standby, but do the benefits really outweigh the costs? In real terms how much energy does a mobile phone charger use when left connected to the mains supply? Should we really be turning everything off at the wall? Or are the savings negligible?

Jaffa's Green Blog will investigate the power consumption of everyday devices around the home and let you know where you could be saving electricity, cutting costs and reducing CO2 output and the carbon footprint of your own home.

Additionally, we'll review some of the power saving devices available on the market today and see how they can be used to cut power consumption around your home. ]]> http://www.jaffacake.net/dxcomments/welcome http://www.jaffacake.net/dx/welcome?opendocument&comments