When it comes to finding low hanging fruit in becoming a greener home or office, I say turn off the computers. Just turn them off.

The updates will run just fine in the morning – or at lunch. If the old story about the power up/power down cycle extending the computer’s life isn’t an urban legend, it ought to be. Long boot up times? Give me a break.

Since my day to day computer activity at my day job is done with a login without admin privileges, I have a second computer that I will occasionally use to do any lengthy administrative work. It is three or four years old, but respectable enough to get the job done. It is a typical system typically in use by my client base. I recently hooked the Kill-A-Watt meter up to it and found that my modest system uses 1.7kW in an eight hour work day. This was at an idle – I did no work on it at all on it.

Assuming 10 cents per kWh we burned 17 cents worth of electricity. (Roanoke area residential cost in January 2010)

If I leave it on all night (5pm-8am) we burn an extra 32 cents outside of “working hours.”

For 20 work days we have $6.40 of excess cost.

For 8 weekend days we have $3.92 of excess cost.

That gives us $10.32 every 28 day period, of which we have 13 in a year, for a total of $134.16 per year in excess costs.

So on this computer’s fourth birthday, it will have used $536.64 if I had a habit of leaving it on all night. As a small business owner, will that $134/yr for each computer help your budget?

Let’s turn them off!

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