In most cases, PC’s help save power. Less shipping due to email is one good example. Still, they do plug into the wall and if not properly configured can use a fair bit more electricity than necessary. What’s unfortunate is that most PC’s aren’t configured properly because they don’t come from the manufacturer that way.
I’m going to give you some simple tips to save power. I’ll start with those tips that won’t produce any noticeable change in the way your computer operates (unless you happen to watch your electricity meter), and then some that save more but have minor inconveniences.
Minimal Power Management
The first tip is to let your computer take advantage of the power saving features of your CPU. Modern CPUs can use dramatically less power when idling or under light load, by turning off some cores and slowing down others. Since they only do this when they don’t have work to do, the effect is unnoticeable. Unfortunately, most Windows XP computers come configured with these features turned off. In Windows XP you can enable these features through the power options dialog accessible through your control panel.
Windows XP
It’s not too obvious here, but choosing minimal power management does more than just change the values of the “Turn off monitor”, “Turn off hard disks” and “System standby”. It also changes many subtle unseen values. So the tip here is, set your power scheme in Windows XP to “Minimal Power Management” if it’s currently set to “Home/Office Desk” or “Always On” or “Normal”. The “Portable/Laptop” and “Max Battery” schemes are roughly the basically the same as “Minimal Power Management”, except with different defaults for the visible settings.
VISTA
In Vista, processor power management is something that is on by default. Also you can see the actual settings, though it’s a bit more involved. Vista has power plans instead of schemes and they vary a little bit. In general you’re okay if you don’t choose “High Performance”. I know it sounds like something you want, who doesn’t want performance, but really the difference is negligible in terms of performance and high in terms of power usage.
If you want simple, choose recommended to get the equivalent of minimal power management.
On the other hand, if you want to really know what your PC is doing, further down I’ll explain Advanced Power Settings.
Turn off monitor
Modern LCD monitors and laptop screens use much less power than the older CRT monitors did. Still, they are one of the primary power draws from using a PC. Also, unlike CRTs, an LCD turns on and displays an optimal image in less than a second. So setup your computer to automatically turn the monitor off in case you get up and walk away.
Don’t worry about your monitor turning off while watching a video. Media Player and most other video software keeps the monitor on automatically regardless of this setting.
Choose whatever timeout feels comfortable, but lower is better. I set mine to 10 minutes at home and 5 at work (for security mostly).
Another tip, don’t use a screen saver. For one, they’re no longer necessary given the design of monitors today. Second, screen savers have an odd nack for preventing your monitor from being turned off, although they are not supposed to do so.
Windows XP
Select your time after selecting the appropriate power scheme. If you set the scheme second the turn off monitor setting will change again.
Vista
Click on Change plan settings after selecting a plan. Instead of “Turn off Monitor” use “Turn off the display”.
Turn off hard disks
Hard disks turn on and off very quickly too, and depending upon how you use them, they can last quite a bit longer if they get some down time. It’s generally not good to turn a hard drive on and off rapidly, kind of like a lightbulb, but a few times a day will do more good than harm.
I’d recommend setting the hard drive off to 10 minutes.
Windows XP
Once again, select the appropriate time after selecting a scheme.
Vista
In Vista, turn off hard disks is more complex. Click on “Change advanced power settings” once into the Change Plan settings.
This is good and bad. On the bad, this dialog is much more complex. But on the upside it does allow you do to a lot more than XP did. Expand the Hard disk node, then “Turn off hard disk after”, and finally select the appropriate timeout if not already set. You might notice something inside this screen. A bit further down is “Processor power management”.
This is the equivalent to “Minimal Power Management”. 5% and 100% are very good values and should be the default values in your Recommended plan.
Sleep/Hibernate
The last step in saving power is to enable sleep and/or hibernate. These features turn your whole computer off, not just little pieces, and allow you to bring it back to life quickly. Sleep is almost always the faster of the two and the difference in power consumption between sleep and hibernate isn’t huge. I generally prefer to use hibernate explicitly (as a replacement for explicitly shutting the machine down) and sleep as a “walked away” kind of thing. If you’re faint of heart, start with standby unless you have a laptop.
I’d suggest setting this to at least one notch above your monitor off value. It’s nice to have a warning before the PC goes to sleep. If your reading something and you’re monitor flicks off, move the mouse and in less than a second your back to normal. If however it goes to sleep it could be a a little wait because you’ll not only have to wait for the PC to come out of sleep, which is pretty speedy, but you have to wait for it to finish going to sleep too, which usually is slower than coming out.
Windows XP
Once again, sleep is readily available from your power options dialog.
Vista
Your sleep setting is in Edit Plan Settings with the “Turn off the Display” setting.
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