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January 2009

Turn it off...

Recently we've been using an energy monitor on a couple of pieces of equipment in the WebSanity offices to see just how much energy they are using when designing websites! We always try our best to turn off equipment not in use, but we thought we'd see if we could quantify that.

For example, printer power consumption. On: 13W, Standby: 7W, Off: 4W. Yes, that's right, even with the printer turned off it consumes 4W.

But these are trifling amounts, we hear you say, compared to a 2kW kettle. However, you need to look at the time that each device is on for. So, say the printer is on for 8 hours a day, that means it isn't used for 16 hours a day (plus 24 at weekends) or 6,656 hours per year. Multiply the trifling 4W by that number of hours and you're looking at 26kWh of energy consumption. Our kettle boils in about 3 minutes, using about 0.1kWh, so just by turning your printer off at the wall you save enough energy to boil the kettle 260 times!

Looking at some other energy consumptions, a screen left turned on uses 20W, and a heavily loaded PC about 200W (leaving a PC on unnecessarily uses the equivalent energy of boiling 10,000 kettles!!).

Now apply the same principle across all the items in your office and you can see the kind of energy savings you could make by being diligent in turning off unused equipment AND turning it off at the socket - it's not just CO₂ emissions you're cutting, it's not just energy you're saving... it's also cash you're saving: what better incentive can there be to turn it off?!

Give your PC/laptop a new year makeover

Here at WebSanity we care a lot about the environment; one of the things we try to do is to get the most out of the equipment we own. Not only does this reduce wastage (although we do recycle our old PCs through a local charity), it means that we use kit that is more likely to be used by our potential customers - as well as keeping our costs down. However, we've all felt at times the compulsion to upgrade to the latest technology whilst watching the busy cursor, wondering how come the PC that ran like a sports car three years ago has lost is 'va va voom'.

However, With a little careful tinkering from time to time it is easily possible to get your PC back on top form. Here's the rough menu that we follow for a Windows XP machine:

• Backup your PC
• Delete temporary internet files (Internet Explorer: Tools | Internet Options | Delete... | Delete files...)
• Clean up any unnecessary files you have on your PC
• Empty your recycle bin (right click on it and Empty Recycle Bin)
• Run a full disk virus check and check for spyware (OK, this doesn't help performance but it is worth doing at the same time!)
• Run the excellent Glary Utilities to look for system problems AND defragment your registry
• If you're very serious about this then delete files in C:\WINDOWS\PREFETCH
• Delete any windows update uninstalls in the C:\WINDOWS\ directory if you don't need them anymore
• Delete any files in C:\WINDOWS\TMP
• Right click on your hard disk drive, select Properties, then in the Tools tab click Check Now..., tick both boxes and then click Start
• Click the windows Start menu, then Run..., type in MSCONFIG and press Enter
• Select the BOOT.INI tab, tick the /SAFEBOOT option then click OK
• Restart your system and go do something for a few hours as it checks and fixes any disk problems
• When the system starts in safe mode right click on your hard disk drive, select Properties, then in the Tools tab click Defragment Now..., click on the defragment button and again go do something else for a few hours whilst your hard disk is optimised
• When it has finished: Click the windows Start menu, then Run..., type in MSCONFIG and press Enter
• Select the BOOT.INI tab, untick the /SAFEBOOT option then click OK
• Restart your system

This seems like an involved process, but running through it every couple of months keeps your machines running at peak performace: not only saving you money, but helping the environment too.