Florence I.T. Computer help business support and consulting for Northampton, MA

Power Conscious Computing encompasses

the many available choices for running your required computing solutions - while using less energy, cooling and noise. Specialized hardware and consulting costs are not required to save power. Florence I.T. is available for aggressive power savings and consulting, selling and implementing systems that may be used for years in an offgrid solar home or business, or anywhere conservation and ultra low power usage is required or important.

  Hardware: For the right task, specialized hardware can be designed and purchased that is: SMALL, FANLESS, QUIET, COOLER and uses a LOT less power than a standard PC. A perfect candidate for a solution such as this might be, yes, you guessed it: hosting a relatively low traffic web server, such as that used by the Florence I.T. website. Other uses might be a terminal services or thin client machine, or a very small office file and print server. Almost every component choice can add up to power savings. Important choices in particular are the processor and hardrive, the overall architecture and even the cd/dvd drive. Like many electronics, typically the power supply converts AC power to the DC power required for internal components. Bypassing the standard PC's AC power supply gains some added efficiency. We utilize the same approach for automotive PC's as well. Software: Most modern operating systems such as Linux and Windows XP and Vista have power management options that can take advantage of your PC's ability to shutdown or suspend unused devices when not needed.

The same component choices in an ultra low power system also apply to a standard PC purchase or build. Here are some choices you can make yourself if you are interested in conserving power:

• Processor and system config can make a large difference. Don't buy the latest fast machine if you don't need it: faster = more power, fans and heat.
• If you're a power user: try adjusting your processors clock speed in your system bios: this can sometimes dramatically reduce power consumption while lowering performance only slightly. WARNING: this CAN make your system unstable. Use with caution and like all of these suggestions: at your own risk.
• Mobile processors designed for laptops can be used in your custom built desktop.
• Use one large hard drive instead of many smaller ones, if applicable.
• Make sure your bios and operating system are setup to use ACPI to control simple things like: spinning down your hard drive (and shutoff monitor) when not used for X minutes, setting your system to suspend after X minutes of total inactivity. Vista and Linux both have far better power management features than Windows XP.
• Choose an LCD monitor for standard desktop PC's.
• Power your PC and monitor off with a power strip: PC's and many electronics consume power even while "off".
• Generally speaking, get a laptop if at all possible, it's one of the easiest ways to implement all or most of these measures in one fell swoop. Components are designed to be cooler and use less power than their desktop computer counterparts.

Making power conscious computing choices makes sense for a variety of reasons: from battery life in your laptop, to reducing heating and cooling costs, to the environmental benefits. How low can you go? We enjoy answering this question.

For more interesting and detailed tips on power saving in computing, please check the Linux Ecology HOWTO that we have linked to. Also see the following : Energy Solutions Office Equipment, guidelines used for power mangament of computers at Colorado State, and CET :a local (MA) organization with many tips on conservation, recycling and efficieny. We have more detailed repositories of links under the Community section of our weblinks section of the site. Information on our solar powered website can be found under the "Overview" page.

Are there more computer and electronics related conservation links that we should have here? Let us know!

Note: when this article was written in early 05' there were not as many choices as there are today, and continue to be. I hope it's still informative. All vehicle travel is offset with Terrapass starting in late 2007.