Turn Off Your Computer!
Do you keep your PC on all the time? I used too – until I figured out that it was costing me $14.78 per month or $177.30 per year!
My PC uses 200W (+/-10) when running with everything on. I determined this by using a Kill-A-Watt meter I picked up from Amazon.com – check it out on the left. It has paid for itself many times over!
Now I use the power management control panel to cut my computers ‘on time’ from 24 hours to 8 a day, I’ll save $118.20 this year as a result.
Thankfully, the computer industry figured this out ages ago (mainly as a way to conserve battery power on laptops, but we’ll take it!).
Power Management Options for Windows Computers:
Turn Off/Shut Down: Computer is off – no power usage.
Stand By: Your session is saved into the computers RAM and just about everything is shutdown. Your PC continues to use power to support the RAM however (RAM needs power to work – not going into details here!)
Hibernate: Just like StandBy except that the session is stored to the hard drive and the PC is turned off.
Sleep: (Windows Vista): Sleep combines Stand By and Hibernate. This way if power is lost the PC can still restart from where you were. Additionally it can be configured to power down (aka ‘hibernate’) after a set quantity of time has passed.
The same items by power usage:
Turn Off/Shut Down: No Power (Slowest boot time)
Stand By: Power to RAM only (Quickest Boot time)
Hibernate: No Power (Medium Boot time)
Sleep: Power to RAM only initially; No power is used once machine turns off. (Medium, then slowest)
Moral of the story – to save energy and to boot fairly fast – Hibernate!
The concept that you can damage hardware by repeated power up/downs is also false, fyi. Hardware these days is tested for this ability and can withstand it.
You can set these options up to occur automatically via your power management control panel. go and do it now!
