| Top 10 easy ways to reduce energy while computing |
- Use computer and monitor power management. Doing so can save nearly half a ton of CO2 and more than $60 a year in energy costs.
- Don’t use a screen saver. Screen savers are not necessary on modern monitors and studies show they actually consume more energy than allowing the monitor to dim when it’s not in use.
- Buying a new computer? Make energy efficiency a priority while shopping for your PC and monitor. Look for the ENERGY STAR label or browse the Climate Savers Computing product catalog.
- Turn down the brightness setting on your monitor. The brightest setting on a monitor consumes twice the power used by the dimmest setting.
- Turn off peripherals such as printers, scanners and speakers when not in use.
- Fight phantom power; plug all your electronics into one power strip and turn the strip off when you are finished using your computer.
- Use a laptop instead of a desktop. Laptops typically consume less power than desktops.
- Close unused applications and turn off your monitor when you’re not using it.
- Use a power meter to find out how much energy your computer actually consumes and to calculate your actual savings.
- Establish multiple power schemes to address different usage models. For example, you can create a power scheme for playing music CDs that shuts off your hard drive and monitor immediately, but never puts your system into standby mode.
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| Additional Power Management Tips |
- Keeping your Virtual Private Network (VPN) connected may limit your system’s ability to enter standby mode. We recommend you disconnect your VPN when not actively using your corporate network.
- Many popular computer games and other third party software packages that run in the background will not allow the computer to go to sleep – even if they are paused or the active window is minimized.
- Some web sites or pages that have active banners and or animated advertisements will not allow the computer to sleep on its own and must be closed, or the computer put manually into a sleep state.
- Advanced users may wish to establish multiple power schemes to address different usage models. For example, you can create a power scheme for playing music CDs that shuts off your hard drive and monitor immediately, but never puts your system into standby mode.
- To maximize the battery life of your laptop computer, consider setting even more aggressive monitor, hard drive and standby/sleep settings for battery mode.
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http://www.climatesaverscomputing.org/learn/energy-saver-guide/ |
Tags: Green computing
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