How to save electricity with your computer

Way too many computers take up a lot of electricity when nobody's using them because they're not set to go to low power mode when not in use. It only takes a minute to configure them to save power

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• a Windows computer

1. Click on start then control panel. If you're in the new XP display mode, click Performance and Maintenance then double click Power Options. If your control panel displays in classic mode, just double click Power Options.
2. Power Options Config The power options configuration window will pop up. As you can see in the attached picture, the default for many computers is to not turn anything off ever. There are different preset profiles in the Power Schemes drop down menu but you're better off just picking specifically how you want it to act.
3. First of all, instead of running a screensaver, why not just set the "Turn off Monitor" to 5 to 15 minutes. It will prevent burn in and save power. All you need to do is move the mouse and it turns right back on.
4. As for turning off the hard disks, pick a half hour or so. After that long of inactivity, it will stop the hard disks from spinning to save power. It only takes a few seconds to spin back up but it's unlikely to ever happen because I think no program can access the hard drive for the time limit and that never happens. It's nice to set it just in case though.
5. The system standby is the really important one. It puts your computer into lower power mode so it's practically off but still taking enough electricity that as soon as you press a key on the keyboard, it will turn back to normal in seconds. You should probably set this option for 30 minutes to an hour. That way while you're sleeping, it will turn off and take at least 10x less power. If you add it up, the amount of watts a computer takes just to run times probably 8 hours per night times a month equals several dollars worth of electricity. Once you're done setting the options, you can save the settings as a profile in case you want to change between that and another profile at some point or just press ok.
6. If your computer goes to standby mode and pressing a key on the keyboard doesn't wake it up, pressing and releasing the power button on the case will wake it up. After that you can tell Windows to let the keyboard wake up the computer. Right click on My Computer and click on properties. Then go to the hardware tab and click device manager. Once the device manager opens, expand the keyboards category. Your keyboard should be listed there. Double click on it and go to the Power Management tab and put a check in the "allow this device to bring the computer out of standby" option. If there is already a check there, it's just one of those glitchy keyboards that doesn't work for that. Try doing the same setting for the mouse and moving the mouse may bring it out of standby.

Tips & Warnings

• Most laptops will have two rows of options, one for while it's on the battery and one for while it's on the AC adaptor.