Computers can use a lot of power. By using some simple energy-saving strategies, you can reduce your energy bill and help the environment. If you have a laptop, this will also help to increase the amount of time it can run on battery for.
Suspend your computer when you are not using it. This significantly reduces the amount of power it uses, and it can be woken-up very quickly.
Turn off the computer when you will not be using it for longer periods. Some people worry that turning off a computer regularly may cause it wear out faster, but modern computers are quite robust, so this shouldn't be an issue.
Use the Power Management preferences to change your power settings. There are a number of options that will help to save power: you can automatically dim the display or send it to sleep after a certain time; reduce the display's brightness (for laptops); spin-down the hard disk (send it to sleep); and have the computer automatically go to sleep if you haven't used it for a certain period of time.
Turn-off any external devices (like printers and scanners) when you're not using them.
Reduce the screen's brightness; powering the screen accounts for a significant fraction of a laptop's power consumption.
Most laptops have buttons on the keyboard (or a keyboard shortcut) that you can use to reduce the brightness.
If you don't need an Internet connection for a little while, turn off the wireless/bluetooth card. These devices work by broadcasting radio waves, which takes quite a bit of power.
Some computers have a physical switch that can be used to turn it off, whereas others have a keyboard shortcut that you can use instead. You can turn it on again when you need it.
Reduce the number of tasks that are running in the background. Computers use more power when they have more work to do.
To see a list of background tasks, open the
Be careful not to disable any tasks that do something important. You should also note that this is unlikely to make a big difference to your computer's power consumption.