Remember the old song about Santa Claus? “He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake…..” Always found that line a little creepy myself. But now there’s power management software that puts your mind at ease and your energy bills to rest doing just that- watching you.
Pecoboo is a clever “face detecting” program that uses your webcam to tell if you are at your computer or not. It turns your computer display off when you are not there and back on when you sit back down. My kids leave their computers on a lot, even though I remind them to “TURN IT OFF!” about 600 times a day. I even tried guilt tripping them about dying polar bears, but heck, kids are kids.
But I’m totally going to try this. I went to the Pecaboo site and ordered the trial of the software. According to VeryPC, who makes Pecaboo, it not only turns on and off the monitor as I come and go, but can be adjusted to put my whole system on sleep/hibernate if I’m away for a longer period of time. Saves just that more energy. Maybe one more polar bear worth.
This is what it looks like:

v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);}
o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);}
w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);}
.shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);}

Normal
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false
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MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
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font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:#0400;
mso-fareast-language:#0400;
mso-bidi-language:#0400;}

According to the site, you can:
• adjust the PecoBOO “ eye” range between ‘near’ and ‘far’ settings,
• determine how often it looks for you,
• tell it how long to wait before turning off the monitor
• control how deeply to put your system to sleep , or
• tell it to stay awake. (I won’t tell my kids about that one)
I’ll try it out and give you all a full report next week. In the meantime, if you’ve tried it or know someone who has, please comment below, or send me a private message about your experience.
Love,
Liv