Almost all of us love our computers, but I found out today just how much leaving them on all the while is costing me in electricity. Sure, it’s great for information, entertainment and business, but some of the old rules simply don’t apply any more....and in these days of greenhouse gases and global warming, we really don’t need to run a computer 24 hours a day when we’re only using it for, say, three or four hours. Remember the old adage that you should keep your computer on all the while because it would wear it out if you turned it on and off all the time. Wrong. We now know that it’s better to put it into different modes when its not in use. And that way, it’ll end up saving megabucks and not polluting the atmosphere.

All modern computers these days come with modes like ‘idle’, ‘standby’ and ‘sleep’. You can set your own profile by going into the control panel and finding your way to the appropriate place.

Idle – the computer is left on but with no programs other than the operating system running.

Stand-By – the computer is in hibernation. To wake it up, all you have to do is to press the on-off button to bring it back to life; in this way, it’s ‘almost’ off, but not quite, and it only uses about 2 watts of power.

Sleep – Your hard drives and your monitor are off but just moving the mouse wakes the

Now let’s think about the screensaver. It was originally used so that keeping the screen on didn’t burn the details into the chemicals. But a lot of screensavers use a huge amount of graphics energy, and so while your computer is in ‘downtime’, it might be using as much energy as when you’re working on it. So set your screensaver to go to sleep mode after ten or so minutes of non-use to conserve electricity. And use flat screens rather than the old huge television monitors....they’re far, far more cost and energy efficient.

Brian Kopp is an Internet Marketer who left the corporate world to concentrate on improving his lifestyle choices by being released of the burden of earning money by traditional methods. He has a number of Internet business interests and is working towards the goal of minimal input for maximum income.

http://mybusinessworkstoday.com