Thursday, 6 June 2013
5 PC Tricks to Reduce Energy Costs While Computing
Whichever of these devices is in your hands, the benefits of finding ways to use it in an energy efficient manner are numerous; in the case of a PC or plugged in laptop, you’ll be saving on your energy bills, and when it comes to mobile devices such as smart phones or tablets, you’ll be getting more time out of your battery between needed charges and more overall life out of the battery thanks to better use –likewise for your laptop when its disconnected from a wall outlet.
Thus, with these benefits in mind, we go back to the main point, which is utilizing whatever electricity saving tactics you can when doing what you need to do on your different computing devices. Let’s cover some handy pc tricks.
1. Keep Screen Brightness to a Minimum
Whether you’re computing from a PC, laptop or tablet/smartphone, the brightness of your screen will have a big impact on power use. Fixing this is simple: just reduce that brightness down until it’s at the lowest level you can use without having problems with the clarity of what you see.
If ambient brightness is too high to effectively see what’s on your screen, you can then lower the lights in your work area (thus chipping a few more dollars off the energy bill) or you can try adjusting your computer or device screens angle and position until you see more clearly.
2. Shut Off Wi-Fi Whenever Possible
The internal wireless card of almost any type of computing device is virtually guaranteed to sap your batter or overall electrical energy use when it’s active. In order to avoid this, don’t keep your Wi-Fi active unless you actually need it.
Simply set the Wi-Fi access to be password automatic (so you don’t need to keep typing in the password every time from scratch) and conveniently and quickly shut it on or off as actually needed. This advice applies especially to mobile devices that are running off a battery a lot of the time. In the case of a laptop, you can also try running a web connection through an Ethernet cable whenever you happen to be near a router; not only will you actually get a much more steady connection quality, you’ll also render your Wi-Fi unnecessary.
3. Scan for Memory/CPU Hogs and shut them off
Any one of your computing devices will eventually start cluttering up with all sorts of mostly useless programs and processes over time. These could be things you’ve installed for limited uses and never bothered to get rid of or they could be third party installments placed there by your computing device manufacturer. The one thing all of these programs and their processes have in common is that they start to really drain the amount of memory and CPU power your machine uses while also running all the applications you and your machine actually do need to use. The result is a machine that has to work harder all the time and thus use more energy.
The solution: Scan for these processes and either shut them down or thoroughly uninstall them if you’re sure you won’t need them. Programs such as CCleaner and PCDecrapify or the built in tools provided by your OS can let you do either of the above things, which are an uninstall or a manual program shutdown.
4. Using efficient Space Heating Devices
Another, seemingly unrelated piece of energy saving computing related advice comes in the form of tools that don’t directly apply to your computers themselves: We all often have those nights (or days) when we have to spend hours at work in front of our computing machines and the temperature outside or inside happens to be uncomfortably cold, cold enough to make you want to turn up your home or office heating system.
Instead of doing this, and wasting power inefficiently to heat a whole large space when only you need to stay warm, instead make use of a small portable heating system such as a space heater, leg heating panel or foot heating pad. These will let you concentrate heat on only yourself as you work at your computer or mobile device and save you a bundle on heating bills. One company that sells space heaters, Cozy Products, has created a handy chart illustrating exactly the kind of energy savings you can expect with these sorts of devices. The chart is available here: http://www.cozyproducts.com/heating-cost-calculator-pages-251.php
5. Shut off your Devices When you Don’t Need Them
Finally, we get down to the simplest energy saving tip there is: simply shutting off your computing devices when you’re actually done using them for the night. Make this a regular habit, especially for your PCs and laptops, and you’ll start to notice a difference in your office or home energy use –especially if you’ve got a lot of computing machines to shut down when they’re not needed.
About the author: Stephan Jukic is a freelance writer who generally covers a variety of subjects relating to the latest changes in white hat SEO, mobile technology, marketing tech and digital security. He also loves to read and write about location-free business, portable business management and finance. When not busy writing or consulting on technology and digital security, he spends his days enjoying life’s adventures either in Canada or Mexico, where he spends part of the year. Connect with Stephan on LinkedIn.
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