efficiency

Efficient Sticky Notes has been a go-to recommendation for a free sticky notes app, but shareware upgrades are available: Efficient Sticky Notes Pro and Efficient Sticky Notes Pro Portable. They're basically identical, including their modest price, except the portable version can run from a USB drive, and all its "stuff" is inside its program folder instead of roaming throughout Windows. Both versions of Efficient Sticky Notes Pro do everything the free version does and more, including the ability to add attachments to notes. We tried Efficient Sticky Notes Pro Portable Edition in Windows 7.

Instead of skipping … Read more

Staying on top of appointments, to-do lists, and other items can be a chore, but Efficient Calendar offers a way to track your daily, weekly, or annual events in one easy-to-use package. While it doesn't offer email integration like Microsoft Outlook, it serves very nicely as a standalone calendar.

The interface is packed with information and options, but the main functions are neatly organized along the left side, allowing quick access to the calendar, events, and tasks. We found it very easy to add events and tasks with Efficient Calendar. A small window pops up for both with pull-down … Read more

When we're away from our computers and need to make a note of something, notebooks and sticky notes are two of the most obvious places we might do this. On the computer, however, the answer isn't so simple. A word processing program is too cumbersome, a text editor may be too bare-bones, and neither of these options does anything to keep your ideas organized. Fortunately, Efficient Notes Free Portable Edition provides a way to easily record and organize notes. If you have a lot of bright ideas and nowhere to put them, it might be just what you'… Read more

We tend to be suspicious of anything that claims to be designed specifically for ladies -- not just women, but ladies -- particularly if it's something as seemingly gender-neutral as productivity software. This isn't 1950, and on the whole, women's organizational needs don't tend to differ significantly from men's. Any attempt at making an organizer especially "for ladies" has a high probability of being both ridiculous and insulting. Efficient Lady's Organizer Free Portable Edition confirmed our worst fears. Although it's a perfectly serviceable personal organizer, its feminine touches made us kind … Read more

Creating strong passwords is easy, but remembering them is something else entirely; the very characteristics that make passwords hard to crack also make them hard to remember. That's where password managers come in. Efficient Password Manager Free Portable promises to store your passwords and even help you create new, stronger ones. Best of all, it lives on your USB drive or other portable device, ensuring that your passwords are always handy.

Efficient Password Manager has a plain and attractive interface that reminded us a bit of Microsoft Office. The program comes with a built-in Help file, but we didn'… Read more

LAS VEGAS--Intel came clean today about the power efficiency for the new Ivy Bridge chips announced at CES on Monday.

At its CES event, Intel claimed that new power-frugal Y series Ivy Bridge processors were rated at 7 watts -- a remarkable feat on its face, as that's 10 watts less than standard low-power Ivy Bridge chips rated at 17 watts.

It turns out, Intel did some fancy marketing footwork in order to claim the 7-watt rating, as Ars Technica pointed out.

Below is Intel's statement provided to CNET. The operative phrase is: "The TDP of the … Read more

The New York Times today kicked of an investigative series on how the cloud's physical structures are affecting the environment with a first installment that offers some scary stats about energy waste. But some say the story unfairly depicts an Internet industry that has been making major strides in this area.

Taking into account a year's worth of reporting and research, the Times' James Glanz concludes that most data centers are wasting huge amounts of energy, which, puts the information industry "at odds with its image of sleek efficiency and environmental friendliness."

"Online companies typically … Read more

So, how difficult is it to make a low-power-consumption monitor? Well, if this list is any indication, not very. However, among the lowest of low-power-consumption monitors, there's usually one common factor: Twisted Nematic (TN) panels.

Any company can make a low-power-consumption TN-based monitor, though, so a list consisting of only TN monitors would be pretty boring. What would be slightly less boring is a list consisting of In-Plane Switching (IPS) monitors that draw relatively small amounts of power to function. That is a list to get somewhat more excited about. So, I've decided to make that list.

To be clear, the difference you'd pay per year running these things -- using our formula -- is small in the grand scheme of things.

Still, I thought it would be interesting to see just how low IPS monitors can go.… Read more

There are a lot of apps out there with a bit too much fat on them.

These apps continuously ping the network, require multiple redundant downloads, fail to close a connection when shut down, or needlessly drain the phone's battery. Either way, that's bad for consumers and the carrier networks strained by these apps.

Most developers don't know about these issues, and they generally don't affect how the apps run. But AT&T is taking a proactive approach in getting these apps back in shape.

For the past few months, AT&T has been … Read more