Save Energy at Your PC

Reported June 2005

BERKELEY, Calif. (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- Most of us are familiar with the snooze button on an alarm clock. Imagine having one for your computer that's easy to figure out. Scientists have developed a standard that could help you put your computer down for nap. And you'd be amazed at how much money it can save.

Most personal computers have three modes: Off, on, and sleep or stand-by. But do you know the difference?

When a computer screen turns black, the monitor is asleep. But the computer is likely operating at full power.

"They think of it as one device even though it's two separate devices," Bruce Nordman, an energy scientist at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., tells Ivanhoe. He's created an industry standard to show a computer's status, at a glance.

"If the controls are more consistently clear and easier to understand, people might be more likely to use these modes and save a lot of energy," Nordman says.

In the world of traffic lights, green always means go. Red always means stop. Not so in the world of computers, where each brand uses a different word, color or symbol for the sleep mode.

Nordman says, "When you put it to sleep, the indicator light turns to a yellow or amber color. This one goes from green to red. This computer is asleep, and so when it's asleep it pulsates white." His standard uses green for on, no light for off, and amber for sleep.

Sleep mode can save you up to $150 a year for each computer in your house. But until the industry adopts a standard, if you're not snoozing, you could be losing.

You can set most computers to go to sleep automatically by going into the control panel. One final note, even the terminology is inconsistent. Some manufacturers refer to sleep mode as stand by. Check your computer's documents to see how it refers to sleep.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Human Factors and Ergonomics Society
PO Box 1369
Santa Monica, CA 90406
(310) 394-1811
http://www.hfes.org


Click here to watch the video.

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