October 3rd, 2008
Put your PC on an energy diet!
With soaring energy prices people are concerned about how much electricity their gadgets are consuming. Go green by saving dollars and the environment by putting your PC on an energy diet!
Note: You can look at this post in one of two ways. You can either think of it as making you and your tech a little bit more eco-friendly or you can look at it as a way to help you save a few dollars. Either way, I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s a good idea to save power while at the same time saving money.
Simple steps!
Simple energy saving tips that you can put into practice today!
Loading …- First things first!
Find out just how much juice your PC is currently using. There are several devices on the market that will allow you to measure the how much power your PC (and other devices) is consuming.
Two of my favorites power monitoring devices are:
- Kill-A-Watt - Simple set of features
- Watts Up Pro - Advanced set of features, including logging
Either of these will tell you exactly how much power your PC is consuming, and how much it is costing you to run your PC.
Tip: While some power monitors will do the math for you, with some of the cheaper ones you will have to calculate for yourself how much the power is costing you. Fortunately the math is pretty straightforward:
((Watts x Hours in Use)/1000) x Cost per kilowatt-hour = Total cost - Put Vista to sleep
If you’re running Windows Vista then make sure that you get S3 sleep working right if you are going to be making use of it. A properly powered-down PC in sleep mode should be drawing less than 10 watts or so.
Tip: XP users can find power-saving tips here. - Off is better than sleep!
I’ll be honest with you and come clean about the fact that I’m no fan of sleep mode. Why? Because even if you can power down a PC to the point where it consumes less than 10 watts, that’s 10 watts too much when you look at today’s energy prices. Scale up 10 watts over the millions of Vista PCs out there and you quickly realize that sleep mode is a concept from a past era (it’s Vampire Power that Microsoft is making you waste to make Vista seem faster during boot up).
Tip #1: If you have more than one PC then you’re making even bigger energy savings by shutting them off as opposed to putting them in sleep mode.
Tip #2: Contrary to popular belief, you’re not wearing out your PC by switching of off regularly. - Get a “smart” power strip
Chances are that you have a fair bit of kit attached to your PC that you can safely power down as soon as your PC is off. An easy way to do this is to get a “smart” power strip that powers down specific outlets when you switch off your PC.
Tip #1: You might be surprised to find that something as simple as your speakers are drawing 15-20 watts all day, every day. A “smart” power strip can help you put a stop to this waste.
Tip #2: A cheaper solution is to invest in a power strip where each outlet has a switch. - Off the grid!
Are you running a volunteer grid computing applications where you’re searching for aliens, calculating Pi to a crazy number of digits, or folding proteins then these applications are pushing your PC hard when it’s supposed to be idle.
Tip: A PC running applications such as Folding @home can be really expensive to run - if you don’t believe me, hook up a Kill-A-Watt and see for yourself! - Go Notebooks!
Notebooks use far less power than desktops.
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Adrian is a technology journalist and author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology. He also runs a popular blog called The PC Doctor. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
