Green Home Computing...

There are a lot of appliances and gadgets at home that suck a lot of energy even while we're not there. Some things are required like our refrigerator, burglar alarms, thermostat but others just stay on for convenience and time efficiency reasons. One of those items that we leave on that we never would have thought of 10 years ago is our computers, and most computers weren't made to be energy efficient (though the Energy Star program has been in effect for much longer.) Deal News has neat piece on making your computing more green. The article focuses more on making desktop computing more efficient, but another solution is to use a laptop which is more energy efficient. Other things are like I need to remember to turn off my printer when I'm not using it since I really do print so rarely.

As computers become more communications devices (a la skype, instant messaging, Phone over internet) and entertainment systems they stay on more often, and making them more efficient adds up. In a former apartment my housemate use to have 3 computers on all the time, he turned off one and was shocked by the energy savings.