Well, One tends to stare at the monitor when the music is playing and some screen savers are running. But thinking about the current power crisis and go green initiatives, it is better to turn off the monitor to save some energy while listening to music during late nights. Most of the time, either winamp or other media players (if configured) displays nice patterns according to the beat of the music. But frankly, how many watch it for more than one song? (okey. for some it might be a couple of songs). But for people like me who sleep with music on and to prevent the hassle of switching on the monitor everytime the need arises to access, it becomes a pain if the monitor is CRT (which also coughs up a quick surge while initialising from power off mode to power on). Though LCD tend to consume less during the power on initialisation, it is better to keep them soft switched off.
After searching the net for such programs, I stumbled upon a freeware product called TurnOffLCD from Redmond Pie (redmondpie.com). But behold, though it was a small application, it required .NET framework to be installed. I am not complaining about that because almost all computers are loaded with that bloatware, people like me who carry a 32 GB Pen drive loaded with portable applications needed for day to day operations may not appreciate.
With quick whip in C, I recreated that application which is less than 1 KB in size and does the job perfectly. Below is the link for that application. Sorry for posting it in Rapidshare, as I do not have a server space where I can host it.
