I am a software engineer by background. So, computers and I are good friends.

But, I understand not everybody out there is on speaking terms with their computers. In fact, I think there are a lot of people who can barely stand their computers.

I wanted to see if I could help folks patch up their relationships with their computers by finding a way their computers can help them save money.

In particular, most computers nowadays have “energy saving” features built into them. Unfortunately, lots of people don’t have these features turned on. So, your computer winds up spending more time turned on, using up electricity, costing you money and ultimately decreasing the lifespan of your computer.

So, if you follow these instructions, hopefully you and your computer will be happy.

First, I am going to start by assuming that most people are running Microsoft Windows XP. If you aren’t sure whether you are running this or not, watch your screen the next time you boot your machine. There should be a full screen message that says “Windows XP” if you are running this.

I will include instructions for people running Apple MacOS in a separate article.

Anyway, if you are running Windows XP, you can follow these instructions:

1. Click on the big “Start” button in the lower left hand corner of your screen.
2. This will pop up a set of menus. If you look in the right column you should see a entry called “Control Panel.” Click on that.
3. This will bring up a new window with lots of pretty icons. If you look through this list (it is in alphabetical order), you should see one called “Power Options.” Double click this.
4. This will bring up yet another window. This is the important one. At the top of the window, you should see a few tabs, the first of which is labelled “Power Schemes.” We’ll start here.
5. About half-way down the page, you should see a setting called “Turn off monitor” with a pull down after it. This setting allows you to determine when your computer should tell your monitor to go to sleep. You can think of this as a smart screensaver. Rather than putting pretty pictures on your screen when you are not using your computer, why not save energy and have your monitor shut off automatically! I have my computer set to “After 5 minutes.” If you are using your computer, it won’t turn off your monitor — it will only turn off your monitor when you stop using your computer for this long. If your computer does shut off your monitor, all you need to do is wiggle your mouse and your monitor will come back on. It is really simple and saves you money.
6. Right below that is a setting called “Turn off hard disks.” Inside your computer, you have what are called hard disks that are used to store information. Without this setting, these are always turned on and waiting for the computer to say, “Go find me some information.” But, if you aren’t using your computer, there is no reason for them to be waiting. I have my computer set to “After 10 minutes.” If you listen carefully, you might hear your hard drive shut down (just a little click) when you aren’t using your computer. But, past that, you won’t even know that it is turned off. As soon as you start using your computer again, the hard drive will fire up. You won’t even notice the difference. Better yet, having your hard drive turn off actually protects it from damage if someone comes along and runs into the computer. The safest position your hard drive can be in is turned off. So, not only are you saving money, but you are protecting your computer.
7. The next two options are “System standby” and “System hibernates.” Both of these are variants of the same thing. They basically say how long your computer should wait before it turns itself off. I don’t think we need to get into the details of the differences here, but suffice it to say suspending your computer puts it into a “low energy usage” mode while hibernation turns off your computer altogether. In both cases, when you restart your computer, it comes back to exactly where you left it. For the purposes of this column, let me just suggest you ignore hibernation for now and just enable standby mode. I have my computer set to “After 30 minutes.”
8. Once you are finished making all of these changes, hit the “OK” button.

Obviously, the best thing you can do to save electricity is to turn your monitor and computer completely off when you aren’t using it. But, we all get busy and walk away from the computer for ‘just a minute’ and then get distracted on to other things.

So, through these simple steps, your computer will take care of itself even if you forget.

Hopefully, this will help you and your computer have a happier existance together.