Saving the planet five minutes at a time
One of the things I recently found out about Microsoft Word 2007 was that Microsoft decided to change the default margins from 1.25 inches to 1 inch. They estimated that they're probably saving a small forest of trees by increasing the default margins, and thereby increasing the usable area of the page, thereby hopefully using fewer pages.
Likewise, there's a real simple thing that you can do to save a lot of power. Set your monitor to power off after five minutes.
Back in the 1980s, screen savers were created prevent burn in. Later on, power options were included to actually power the monitor off. However, in the old CRT style monitors, there was a concern that turning the monitor on and off too many cycles would cause them to fail. In fact I know of some instances where this did happen. All of us old-timers can probably remember the "thunk" our monitors made when we turned them on and off. So the default was typically set to 30 minutes.
Then again, when was the last time you saw a CRT monitor? Now, LCD monitors are pretty much de rigeur, and I doubt you could even find one in a Best Buy these days. (Manufacturers love the reduced shipping costs of the lighter, smaller LCDs.)
The problem is, most computers are still set to power off monitors after 20-30 minutes. (The risk of burn in on LCDs is also almost nil, unless you have the same image up for weeks at a time.) Not only are LCD monitors much more power efficient, but they do not "thunk" when you turn them on or off. That's because there is no huge surge of power to get those electrons firing. In fact, you can cycle them on and off orders of magnitude more times without failing. I've worked in IT with hundreds of users of LCD monitors, and not known one to fail under these circumstances. I myself have had the same monitor for about 5 years, and it's still working as well as it did the day I got it. (It's a nice 17", and while I would probably like a bigger one, it's still a trooper working just fine.) More than likely you'll upgrade your monitor before it fails. But even then, I'm still on the same monitor from two computers ago, and have no immediate plans to upgrade.
So where am I going with this? Change your monitor to power off to after only five minutes. That's long enough so it won't just go off if you're reading sfgate, but quick enough that if you run into a meeting or get talking to your coworker, it'll shut off by itself quite quickly, and thus save power.
On PCs, right-click on your desktop. Click personalize or properties. You'll have an option to switch the screen saver. While you're at it, turn any screen saver to blank. (Since we're just going straight to power off, any screen savers running just use a bit more CPU time.) There's typically a power settings option. Select Change Plan Settings for your current selected plan and set the monitor to turn off after five minutes. Then save.
Better yet, lobby your IT department to change the default time to power off monitors from 20 to 10 minutes. 10 minutes are enough of a change by default that few people would mind (they can set to 5 minutes if they're more generous), but large enough to see a great savings. At my current client, we estimated we'll save hundreds of dollars a month in electrical costs after the next rollout, spreading those savings over hundreds of monitors. (Not to mention prevent a few tons of CO2 a year from entering the atmosphere.)
While you're at it, Vista has an option to soft power down after so many minutes. While you're computer is running, you can have it also donate your unused CPU time to worthy computing projects, such as finding drugs against HIV and cancer, or predicting the effects of global warming. Go to www.worldcommunitygrid.org and download the agent. By default, it runs at the lowest priority so any applications you're working on have priority and you usually don't notice its running. (On a newer computer, even a power user like me rarely notices.) Otherwise, you can have it set to only run when idle, or manually say "sleep" if you're doing something really intensive for awhile, then wake up after a set period (typically an hour).
That way you can reduce the amount of power your computer uses, and get the most use out of it for the time it is on!
Likewise, there's a real simple thing that you can do to save a lot of power. Set your monitor to power off after five minutes.
Back in the 1980s, screen savers were created prevent burn in. Later on, power options were included to actually power the monitor off. However, in the old CRT style monitors, there was a concern that turning the monitor on and off too many cycles would cause them to fail. In fact I know of some instances where this did happen. All of us old-timers can probably remember the "thunk" our monitors made when we turned them on and off. So the default was typically set to 30 minutes.
Then again, when was the last time you saw a CRT monitor? Now, LCD monitors are pretty much de rigeur, and I doubt you could even find one in a Best Buy these days. (Manufacturers love the reduced shipping costs of the lighter, smaller LCDs.)
The problem is, most computers are still set to power off monitors after 20-30 minutes. (The risk of burn in on LCDs is also almost nil, unless you have the same image up for weeks at a time.) Not only are LCD monitors much more power efficient, but they do not "thunk" when you turn them on or off. That's because there is no huge surge of power to get those electrons firing. In fact, you can cycle them on and off orders of magnitude more times without failing. I've worked in IT with hundreds of users of LCD monitors, and not known one to fail under these circumstances. I myself have had the same monitor for about 5 years, and it's still working as well as it did the day I got it. (It's a nice 17", and while I would probably like a bigger one, it's still a trooper working just fine.) More than likely you'll upgrade your monitor before it fails. But even then, I'm still on the same monitor from two computers ago, and have no immediate plans to upgrade.
So where am I going with this? Change your monitor to power off to after only five minutes. That's long enough so it won't just go off if you're reading sfgate, but quick enough that if you run into a meeting or get talking to your coworker, it'll shut off by itself quite quickly, and thus save power.
On PCs, right-click on your desktop. Click personalize or properties. You'll have an option to switch the screen saver. While you're at it, turn any screen saver to blank. (Since we're just going straight to power off, any screen savers running just use a bit more CPU time.) There's typically a power settings option. Select Change Plan Settings for your current selected plan and set the monitor to turn off after five minutes. Then save.
Better yet, lobby your IT department to change the default time to power off monitors from 20 to 10 minutes. 10 minutes are enough of a change by default that few people would mind (they can set to 5 minutes if they're more generous), but large enough to see a great savings. At my current client, we estimated we'll save hundreds of dollars a month in electrical costs after the next rollout, spreading those savings over hundreds of monitors. (Not to mention prevent a few tons of CO2 a year from entering the atmosphere.)
While you're at it, Vista has an option to soft power down after so many minutes. While you're computer is running, you can have it also donate your unused CPU time to worthy computing projects, such as finding drugs against HIV and cancer, or predicting the effects of global warming. Go to www.worldcommunitygrid.org and download the agent. By default, it runs at the lowest priority so any applications you're working on have priority and you usually don't notice its running. (On a newer computer, even a power user like me rarely notices.) Otherwise, you can have it set to only run when idle, or manually say "sleep" if you're doing something really intensive for awhile, then wake up after a set period (typically an hour).
That way you can reduce the amount of power your computer uses, and get the most use out of it for the time it is on!
posted by Joe Carlin at 5:10 PM
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