The notion that black screens save electricity certainly makes sense when you're talking about cathode-ray tube, or CRT, technology that works by moving an electron beam back and forth across the back of the screen. In fact in newer liquid-crystal display, or LCD, monitors white is actually slightly more energy efficient than black.
Because computer monitors come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and not all monitors create black and white the same way, there's no proof that, on the whole, increased usage of black images would save more energy than the continued use of white ones. The green computing movement demands that all computer users shed the energy-wasting practices to which they've grown accustomed-so you decide that you're going to power down your PC at night, invest in an Energy Star–approved laptop, and only visit Web pages that eschew white space in favor of ostensibly more energy-efficient black backgrounds.īefore you tune out and turn off, you should know that black isn't necessarily the new green.
