Green is the New Gold - What you can do
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There are a few things you can do to cut down on your electric bill without running out and buying all new electronics. The biggest thing you can do will come from your computer. Keeping your computer on and running it in normal mode with the monitor on is probably the worst thing you can do to save power. If you aren’t using the computer, you can turn off the monitor without losing data. When you need it, turn on the power and the screen will appear exactly as you left it.
As far as your PC is concerned, all modern computers support sleep or hibernation mode. This leaves the PC somewhere between being on and shut down. You can wake it up by simply hitting the power button again. If you are part of a network and fear missing network updates, don't worry because most computers support Wake on LAN, which will make the computer wake up when the network wants it to.
The biggest myth in terms of saving energy is using the screen saver. The screen saver does NOT save energy. The screen saver was meant to save the screen from monitor burn-in, hence, the name.
Conclusion
I hope this article has made you more conscious of the rapid growth of “green” technology. Over the past year or two, a lot of manufacturers have begun producing more energy efficient products. Many different parts of the computer are becoming more green instead of more powerful.
Even overclockers will be able to do their part to help the cause, and we typically use enough power for two or three computers. Even if you can’t get new hardware that is energy efficient right now, you can still do a lot to save power while using your computer.
The future looks to be even greener in all aspects of energy consumption -- from cars to planes, all the way down to batteries. Anything we can do now to help lessen the demand for oil and fossil fuels is a benefit for everyone.
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