Tips on how to save Electricity – Computers : General

1. The Display is the best place to start.
Whether you are using an LCD Display, CRT, or the LCD on your Laptop, turning the display off will give you the most savings on your electric bill. Screensavers are just that, screensavers, they don’t provide any Powersaving feature. If you don’t want to constantly turn your display on or off, you can also use your monitor’s “Low Power Stand-by” feature, it will cut the monitor’s energy consumption by as much as 80%.

A great trick I learned is to reduce the Brightness on the display to about 50% and use my video card’s utility software to increase brightness. Reducing your monitor’s brightness also saves electrical consumption. Video Card vendors such as ATI and NVIDIA have utilities that can control the brightness of the display, without increasing the energy consumption of the video card. It doesn’t affect playing video’s though, but of course, you can use a movie player that has color/brightness/gamma control, such as VLC Media Player.

2. Use a Good Powerstrip Instead of an AVR.
Most Powerstrips have built-in line filters and surge suppressors (Such as Panther and Surer Brands in the Philippines), that it is safe to use even Generic PSU’s without AVR’s. AVR’s consume additional energy, and the energy it consumes gets higher as it heats up and used for a long period of time.

3. Shut it
Off. If you’re not going to use your PC for a long time, Shut it down and turn it off. If you hate waiting for long boot times, then use the Suspend/Hibernate Feature. You can also use the Power Schemes found on most operating systems like Windows and Linux.

4. Consider a 2nd PC
If you’re a Gamer or you really need a High-End Performance PC, then consider buying a 2nd, low end, low energy consumption PC for more “normal” tasks such as surfing the net or Office work, preferably a laptop. You can turn off your high-end PC after playing, then switch to the low power PC for tasks that don’t usually need high computing power

5. Buy a Laptop
If you don’t have the need for A High-End Performance or Gaming PC, then you should just use a Laptop. Even a 2nd hand one. This is specially true if you’re just using the PC for surfing the net and Office tasks. Most Pentium-3 based laptops are great, specially the 800Mhz and 1 Ghz speeds, because they offer more computing power per watts consumed.

A great way to save on Laptop purchase is to buy a 2nd hand one which have some defects that doesn’t necessarily affect performance and computing power. Cracks and dents on the casing significantly reduces a laptop’s price. If you don’t really care for aesthetics, you will definitely get a bargain on your purchase. You don’t even need a working battery pack, as long as you have the power adapter to plug in to the AC outlet, but of course you’ve got to forget mobile computing. A great bargain, but a rare find would be finding a high-end laptop, even with gaming power, that has a defective/non-working LCD display, battery, and keyboard but all connections, such as PCMCIA Slots, VGA out, USB, and PS/2 are still functioning properly. You can connect an LCD display, external keyboard, and the AC adapter to use it. Not only will you save money on buying it, but you’ll definitely going to save a lot on your electric bill.

7. PS/2 over USB
Using PS/2 mice and keyboards are better than using USB types. Each PS/2 connection uses only 2Watts, while USB devices draw out 5 Watts. If you’re using a USB connection for both your mouse and keyboard, that’s a difference of 6 watts if you’re using PS/2.

8. Unplug Any Unused USB/FireWire Devices
Unplug any USB and FireWire Devices that draws power from the USB/FireWire port from your PC when you are not using them. These devices include Bluetooth/IrDa USB devices, Webcams, Flash Drives, and Memory Card Readers. Each USB and FireWire device on your PC that is powered through the USB and FireWire ports consume 5 Watts and 8 Watts respectively. However, devices that are connected tthough the USB and FireWire ports that uses those ports solely for Data Transmission is safe to leave plugged in. These devices include Enclosures, Printers, and Scanners

9. Use your Operating System’s Power Schemes
Most popular operating systems such as Windows, Linux, and Mac OS, have Energy saving power schemes that enables your PC to automatically power down your System, Hard Drive, and Monitor whenever these components are not in use.

10. Save Power on Idle PC’s
CHECK OUT THIS SITE. This website discusses how you can save more energy when you’re PC is Idle.