I recenlty took my parents computer tower and merged the parts with my old computer. When I got it up and running I had forgot to do the Power Management settings so I thought this woudl be a good time to go over some points on how to save money on your energy bill by fine tuning your computer.

Facts About Computers and Energy Use
1. Screen savers do not save you money on your energy bill. In fact it is probably costing you more to use the screen saver than not. Think about how a fancy screen saver works. It is making you CPU work hard to display those pictures or stars or whatever it is you use.

2. Laptops use about 90% less energy than a desktop computer.

3. Turning off your computer and all of the attachments like printers, speakers, scanners etc will save you money on your energy bill. Try to only turn things on when you need them or are using them.

4. If you are using a desktop switch your old monitor for an LCD monitor, they use much less power than those old ones the weigh about 1,000 pounds.

5. You are not going to destroy you computer by turning it on and off a couple of times a day. Many people think that the wear and tear is going to ruin their computer. This simply isn't true. While your computer does use more energy starting up you are probably going to offset this by not leaving it on all day when you aren't using it.

Power Management Settings for Your Computer

I have my computer and monitor set up to power down after 15 minutes of non-use. This is the best way to save energy with your computer. It's probably the best way to go because then you don't have to worry about it and if you forget to turn it off you are still going to get the energy saving benefits.

  • For Windows 98, 2000 and XP
    1. Click "start" at the bottom left side of your screen
    2. Click on "settings" – "control panel"
    3. Open "display" and click on "screen saver"
    4. Click on "power"
    5. Under "Power Schemes", use the drop down arrow to find "home/office desk"
    6. Select the times – choose a short duration (e.g. 15 minutes), so that the monitor sleeps when you step away from the computer for short times, or powers down when you are gone for longer times.
    7. Click on "Apply"
    8. Click on "OK"
  • Macintosh Users
    1. Select the Apple Menu
    2. Go to Control Panels
    3. Click on Energy Saver
    4. This will also bring up a dialog box for setting sleep times for the entire system, the monitor or the hard disk

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