Power saving tips for computers
Everyone in South Africa should, by now, be taking stock of the electrical items they can start unplugging to reduce their consumption in the dark days ahead. One appliance few people can do without during the day however? The computer!
The following article gives some tips on how to reduce the energy consumption of your PC and will give you ways to keep working when the lights go out.
One piece of hardware which I’ll refer to is a UPS or Uninterrupted Power Supply — essentially a big battery which gives you a few precious minutes once the power has gone so that you can shut down your PC safely.
UPS’ are rated in VA or Voltage Amps — the higher this number, the longer it will stay on. With UPS’ you often get what you pay for.
It is common for the cheap 325VA (under R400) UPS’ to last a minute or two which is not enough time to achieve anything. Expect to pay around R1,000 for a good quality UPS which produces 650VA to 1000VA.
Laptops are the easiest solution to power shedding woes for the obvious reason that they have a battery built in. Few people get a UPS and attach it to a laptop, but if the average load shedding period is two hours and your laptop only lasts one hour, it will certainly help.
In addition, when the power goes or comes back up you can have electrical spikes which cause long term damage and a UPS will reduce these significantly.
Some laptops allow you to remove your CD/DVD drive and add an additional battery very easily. Consult your vendor and see if this is possible as it’s certainly the easiest and neatest solution.
Lastly, all modern laptops have ways in which you can reduce the energy consumption by reducing performance and other high-drain functions.
Every laptop is different but you can often access this function by double clicking the battery icon in the lower right hand corner.
Alternatively look through your laptop manual.
Assuming your laptop is still working you’ll often need Internet and E-mail access too. This is where you’ll need to invest in a second UPS which powers your modem and ADSL or iBurst router.
This can be a cheaper UPS and will make more sense than buying a bigger and (exponentially) more expensive one which powers everything. Simply plug whichever Internet device you use into the UPS and it should last for up to an hour.
The neater but more expensive option is to get a 3G or HSDPA modem which plugs directly in, and gets its power from, the laptop itself.
Unfortunately for desktop computer users the options are much slimmer. Even a very good quality UPS will only give you up to 20 minutes which is, incidentally, just enough time to write a letter of complaint to Eskom and the government.
Some things you can do to extend this time limit are to buy an LCD (flat screen) monitor and make sure your printer is not connected to the UPS.
Just remember you will also need a separate UPS for your Internet device as mentioned above.
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