Four Ways to Save Energy with Your Computer

Often there are little things we can do collectively to make a large positive impact on our environment. Saving small amounts of energy on a daily basis, when done by many people, can add up to be huge. One of the ways we can save small amounts of energy on a regular basis is to make our computers more energy efficient. Here are four easy ways to make your computer use less energy.

First, tell your computer when to turn the monitor off. Most of us leave our computers on all of the time because there are certain advantages to doing so, but what about the monitor? Does it really need to be on constantly? Screen savers are great for keeping your display safe, but do they really need to run all night when nobody is even in the room? You can tell your computer when you want it to turn your monitor off by adjusting the power settings in your control panel to save energy.

Adjust your screen saver and power settings so that your computer will display your screen saver for a few minutes or more, then turn the monitor off. If you want to save even more energy you can turn the screen saver off all together and set your computer to turn the monitor off within a few minutes of inactivity. The monitor will come back on when you press a key or move the mouse just like it does with the screen saver but it will be in standby mode instead of being on.

Second, tell your computer when to turn the hard drive off. Your computer's hard drive doesn't need to be running when your computer is sitting idle. Adjust your power settings in your control panel so that your computer puts your hard drive in stand by mode after a few minutes or so of inactivity, this will keep it from running constantly when it isn't needed. Your hard drive will "wake up" again as soon as you press a key or move the mouse.

Third, turn off all the extra stuff when not in use. Keep things such as printers, scanners, backup drives, external speakers, etc. turned off when you are not using them. These things sit idle a good deal of the time and are wasting energy if they are running for no reason.

The three things listed above are great ways to save energy when your computer isn't in use but what about saving energy while you are working on it? The fourth way to save energy with your computer is to use less energy while surfing the net. Heap Media has come up with an energy saving search page that can potentially have a huge impact on the environment when used by a lot of people. Their site Blackle.com is a Google Custom Search portal featuring an energy saving black screen background that will allow you to perform all of your Google searches while using less energy than the default white Google search page.

In theory if Google users made Blackle.com their home page and conducted all searches from there, we could save an estimated 750 megawatt-hours per year of energy. Heap media already claims that Blackle users have saved over 782,235 watt hours just by using the search portal as of the time of this writing. Visit http://www.blackle.com/about to find out more.