localcooling.com

sparrer

localcooling.com by Uniblue is apparently a piece of software downloaded onto the pc to turn off monitor/drives/pc after a certain time to conserve energy. I looked into downloading it but got the notice 'publisher cannot be verified' so cancelled the download.

Has anybody heard of this, and if so what is your opinion please? Am always looking for ways to save energy and reduce bills, even if by pennies.

Marty_J

Doesn't Windows do this already?

sparrer

Marty_J wrote: »

Doesn't Windows do this already?

My monitor turns itself to screensaver after 5 minutes but as I turn it off whenever I leave the pc it never gets a chance to do so. I don't know about drives, not being very tech, and my pc doesn't turn itself off, I have to do it manually. I'll do a search and see what Windows has to say about it :rolleyes:

Paparika

start/settings/control panel/power options

superscaper

sparrer wrote: »

My monitor turns itself to screensaver after 5 minutes but as I turn it off whenever I leave the pc it never gets a chance to do so.

Well if you're interested in conserving energy screensavers are pointless anyway. They serve no purpose nowadays other than as an aesthetic or automatic processing such as the folding@home project. But all of those mean your PC may actually be running even more intensively on average than normal! (Monitor screens don't even need to be "saved" any more). Switching it off is the best idea IMHO or powering down using the power options the other posters have mentioned.

iviv

Yeah, screensavers used to be designed to prevent an image burning into the screen over time. But thats not a problem any more. Also, while manually turning your monitor off will save power, you should still have the PC set to turn off the monitor as well. Because when you turn the monitor off, the PC is still sending a picture to it, while when the PC turns the monitor off, it stops sending the picture, causing the monitor to go into stand by. I'm not sure how much of a saving this will be, but every little helps.
All the window saving tools work well, powering down the hard drive won't save much either. Maybe send it to sleep if you know you're going to be away from it for some time?