One website in particular has begun to get on my nerves recently. The newspaper recently revamped themselves and put up a new faster loading website. Except that the new design made room for even more annoying advertisements. Especially the kind that will play at random if you use a non-Windows platform. Full volume movie trailer with explosions.
The website might be loading faster, but in return, it manages to use about 50% of my CPU. This really pisses me off. Using an ad-blocker, the CPU usage is less than 1%. I guess this is really my point, but climate stories are big this season.
In a set of measurements of questionable scientific standard, I used a power-meter I had checked out at the local library to measure how much power my computers used, viewing politiken.dk with and without an ad-blocker.
Ubuntu 9.10 (+30W / 25%)
Without ads: 120W
With ads: 150W
Windows 7 (+15W / 11%)
Without ads: 122W
With ads: 147W
Mac OS X 10.5 (+9W / 13%) (Laptop and x5 the number of open instances)
Without ads: 14W
With ads: 23W
Say you have a web browser open for 3 hours every day and your computer uses 12W more with Flash ads, then you emit around 7 kg CO2 each year.
