With Earth Day being this week, I thought I’d spend a little time speaking about one of the biggest offenders in the energy use category – your computer.  Recently I read an article that stated U.S. businesses spend over $1 trillion dollars a year paying to power idle computing equipment.  Household costs probably equal, or double that, which amounts to a massive amount of money – and natural resources – being wasted on inefficent or idle computers.  Think about it, your average PC uses around 150 watts of power, many double or triple that, if you have ten computers in your office that’s 1500 watts – per hour.  That’s 15 100 watt lightbubs being left on for no reason – would you let that happen in your house?   It is, however, very easy to save money – and the planet – by following some simple steps:

1.) Power off! Even when idle, and with the monitor “asleep” a average PC will draw that 150 watts of power.  Why?  The components are all still being powered, and the monitor keeps it’s capacitors charged for a quick “wake up”.  The easiest way to save money is to actually shut the computer completely down, then power the monitor completely off.  10 watts is 10 watts, any little bit adds up!  Power that computer off when you leave for the day, or leave home in the morning, and help save money and natural resources.

2.) Upgrade! New computers are more power efficient than ever, while also being faster than ever.  At home I upgraded the “family PC” to a ridiculously fast machine with a quad-core processor and stunning graphics, while also saving nearly 200 watts of energy over the 5 year old PC we previously used.  Look for machines with lots of memory (more on this in a second), and either AMD Athlon X2/Phenom processors or Intel “Core” series processors (Core, Core Duo, Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, Core i7).

3.) Get more memory and give your disk a break! One of the most power-hungry components in your computer is the hard disk, it’s also one that’s most often used for no reason.  When your computer runs out of RAM it uses “virtual memory”, which is basically files on your hard disk, to compensate.  However, RAM sticks use very, very little memory while your hard disk – which is a moving component with a motor – uses a lot of energy and also generates heat.  Consider a memory upgrade for your computer if you see your hard disk light on constantly, not only will it make your computer considerably faster, but it will also save energy costs.  This is also the best “bang for the buck” you can do, I recently doubled the RAM on my company machine for under $40!

4.) Consider a laptop – My company computer is a laptop, which even being a very powerful one, consumes a measly 73 watts when running all-out.  Idle, it uses around 25 or 30, which is a fifth of what a comprable desktop would use.  Adding a docking station, I can use a regular keyboard, mouse, and monitor – and still come in total under 80 watts idle, and under 150 under load.   Some new “netbooks”, the tiny laptops you are seeing pop up, use as little as 15 watts under load! You’ll gain mobility, and save money at the same time.

5.) Ditch the old tube monitor – One of the worst power offenders, and biggest sources of heat are the old tube-based monitor.  A flat panel monitor will use around 10% of the power that a tube will, while also generating nearly 90% less heat! You don’t see many tube-based monitors for sale anymore, for good reasons, most manufacturers have stopped production of them due to the high environmental cost and low price of flat panels.

6.) Enable power-saving profiles in Windows – In the Control Panel there is a “Power Options” icon.  Try switching the Power scheme to “Portable/Laptop”.  Windows Vista and the upcoming Windows 7 do an even better job with power management, try selecting “Power Saver” on Vista.

7.) Turn down the brightness on your monitor – With LCD monitors this can do an even better job of conserving energy, with mine I generally run the bightness at 40%, as most LCD monitors are quite bright to begin with.  In addition, this helps your eyes as many LCD’s use a fluorescent bulb to light the screen, which can at times cause eye fatigue.

All are very simple steps you can do to conserve energy, the first one being the most signigicat.  If you’d like more tips on conservation, or would like some help upgrading your PC, remember that is what I and your IT department are here for.  We’ll be happy to give you ideas, recommend upgrades, and the IT guys will even install those upgrades for you – at no cost, aside from the parts!

Remember, every little bit helps.  If all of our 600+ agents and employees were to turn off their idle computers at work and at home for an hour we could save 60,000 WATTS of electricity!  That’s enough to light 1000 average household lightbulbs (60 watts) for an hour.

Quick Tip Of The Day – I’m moving more and more towards going “paperless”, and not only am I helping future generations, but I’m also finding it’s heloping me become more and more organized.  I’ve requested that most vendors now email me invoices instead of paper invoices, which I in turn email to our accounting department.  Instead of writing my meeting notes to take with me, or presentations, I save them as a PDF and upload them to my smartphone.  At home I use Wells Fargo Bill Pay and request all electronic bills, saving postage, time, and ordering of checks.  Finally, when I do need to print notes or something of non-critical importance, I use a stack of paper previously used on one side to do so both at home and here at HomeServices.

Slowly but surely, I’m finding my “clutter” diminishing, and my organization greatly increasing.   Don’t take my word for it – try it yourself!