Set Your Computer for Energy Savings

Set Your Computer for Energy Savings
Did you know your computer has energy saving settings built in? Utilize them with these tips.
By Jaymi Heimbuch
Santa Maria, CA, USA | Wed Nov 19 09:00:00 EST 2008

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Computers | Energy | Laptops | Phantom Power | Saving Energy | Technology

There is a wide range of power-saving software that helps reduce the amount of energy your PC consumes. And yet, your computer is already equipped with power saving settings you can utilize. Try out these tips to set your computer for maximum energy savings.

For PCs:
First, right click on the desktop and select Properties. Then turn off your screen saver. Sounds strange, to be sure. But the screen saver actually doesn't save energy—it keeps your computer running at full power, rather than slipping to sleep. Next, go to your control panel in the start menu and select power options. Set your computer to go to standby after 15 minutes, your monitor and hard disks to shut off after 5 minutes.

For Macs:
Click on the Apple icon and go to System Preferences. Under Hardware, select Energy Saver. Here you can adjust power supply settings for Better Energy Savings. You can adjust the timing for sleep mode for the computer and monitor similar to the steps for a PC.

For Notebooks:
It is also important to use a power save scheme on laptops, which allows you to adjust the screen brightness, display options, and sleep mode timing for further energy savings when you're unplugged from your charger. These settings are also available in the power options area.

Helpful Websites:
Yale.edu has a helpful section that walks you through screenshots of adjusting the settings on your computer to maximize power.

Energy Star also has a range or resources for saving energy on your computer.

Extra Steps:

Turn your computer off at night.

Plug components into a power strip so you can cut off all power when not in use.

For laptops, unplug the charger when the laptop is turned off to prevent vampire power.

Avoid turning your printer on when you don't need it.

If you'd like to do more with your computer energy savings, check out downloadable power saving software, some of which also track your carbon savings. Find out more information about making your computer efficient.

I have a comment to make about this article. I am all for saving energy but I donate my computer when I am away from it or sleeping to the BOINC program that uses distributed computing to look for cancer cures. I allowed them to put a small computational program on my computer that crunches numbers for them and sends it to the University of California, Berkely. It takes small chunks of data and crunches them in the background as I use my computer too. I have been doing this for the past 5 years or so and have had NO problems with this program. The Miami-Dade School Board has approximately 20,000 computers that could be utilized for the BOINC program too, after the kids have left school, and no longer are using them. I would be willing to wager that there are HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of computers in school districts all over the world that could be utilized for this endeavor. Think about how many numbers could be crunched then! It would be like a super-computer! And that idea isn't even taking into consideration how many corporate and governmental computers could be utilized. There are several programs similar to BOINC that can be used for the benefit of mankind. One is a climate prediction program that is intended to help predict future weather for farmers, etc. There's about a dozen research projects that are associated with this concept of distributed computing from established and credentialed university research programs.

I mentioned this idea to the IT guy here at school and he said he would be willing to propose it to his boss but there is a cost associated with leaving the computers on all night. For years all the school computers were left on all night, so it should be easy to tell exactly how much is being saved by turning them off at night by subtracting current bills from old bills. I wonder what that cost would be, as the cost of energy is considerably less during the night.

Perhaps this could be a government grant to different School Boards to pay for the energy used. Or perhaps the Universities themselves could fund X amounts of distributed computing for X amount of computers as a part of their research programs. I wonder how many military computers aren't used after hours?
I recently saw something where virtual computers, up to 36 of them, could be operated off one mainframe at a fraction of the energy cost. perhaps that's something that could be utilized for this project.