I would have to say that the sleep button is the most underused function on the computer. You may be able to justify this by telling yourself that your computer takes to long to boot up so you leave it on. But does it really make sense to leave your computer on for 6-8 hours while you sleep just so that you will not have to wait an extra two minutes? Not only does leaving the computer on for all those hours waste money and increase your electric bill, but it puts unnecessary wear and tear on your computer. Would you leave your car running all night just so that you don’t have to go into a cold car in the morning? Do you leave your oven on all day just so you do not have to wait for it to preheat? And unless you enjoy having your car stolen, you would not leave it running while you are in the store. So why does one feel the need to leave the computer running all day long?
A solution to this is to get a faster computer…..or, the simple solution is to just use the sleep button. The computer uses very little energy in sleep mode, and when you “wake” it up, it turns on instantly and saves all of the windows and programs you had open. The hard part is what to do with those extra two minutes you just gained. You can also set your computer to go to sleep after a certain amount of time so you won’t have to worry about forgetting about leaving your computer on.
Desktops generally use 100 – 250 watts when on and use only 1 – 6 watts when they are in sleep mode. Screen savers do not save you any money because the computer is still running (fans and drives are all still spinning) and that nifty bouncing ball may even use more energy since the computer needs to process those graphics. True, if the computer is just sitting around it will use less energy than if you were doing some intense gaming, but that is why I gave you a range: 100 watts for checking your Facebook and 250 watts for playing the Sims.