Reduce your electricity bills.

Many people don’t think of the money they spend on the electricity that powers their computers but it can be a significant amount. We all know that standby on our TVs uses almost as much power as being switched on and few of us leave all the lights on at night, so why not apply the same thinking to computers – at home and at work.
Here are 5 quick wins to reduce your electricity bills.
• Disable your screen saver. Screen savers do not save power, if your screen saver is active your monitor is running at full power.
• Use the in-built power management functions (in Windows this is found in the control panel, in Mac OSX in System Preferences). Set your monitor to switch off after 10 minutes of activity and suspend your computer after 15 minutes.
• Switch off at night. With the exception of servers and routers there’s not much that needs to be on 24/7, so like your lights – switch them off at the wall, printers included.
• Unplug or disable external devices when not in use. They mostly draw some kind of power when plugged in so unplug that camera or external hard drive if you’re not using it. If you’re using a network cable, switch off the wireless network adaptor. If you don’t need Bluetooth connected to anything, switch it off!
• If you still have a CRT monitor (old television style) replace with a flat screen (TFT). A TFT typically uses about a third of the power.

All the major manufacturers are taking energy efficiency seriously and a PC bought today is a lot “Greener” than the equivalent a couple of years ago – as with everything though some are better than others.
Just by making a few changes in your habits you can realise some very real cost savings – and you’re not really giving anything up.