PecoBOO Detects Your Presence to Save Juice

Using computer energy saving settings is certainly far better than the alternative, but at best they are rough estimates of one’s personal computer usage—how long we’re likely to be staring at our screens without stirring our cursor, for instance. But there are still those times at which we watch a movie or stare at a particularly complicated document, only to have the display annoyingly dim or turn off entirely. New software from VeryPC, a British company that specializes in energy-efficient computers, aims to address this problem with an elegant facial recognition solution. Rather than using a set of timers—a rather archaic method if you think about it—VeryPC’s PecoBOO application will detect the presence of a user’s face via their computer’s webcam. When the user leaves the computer, custom energy-saving settings can kick in—dimming the screen or perhaps idling the computer entirely—both effortlessly lowering energy usage and preventing annoyances. PecoBOO is already available for Windows Vista and XP.

[via TreeHugger]