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Why it's still vital to switch it off

Posted on 19 Sep 2007 at 17:16

It's not only users who are to blame. Battery performance in many of these devices is getting worse. Our reviewer found the battery on Nokia's flagship N95 smartphone often discharged within a day, meaning that phone probably spends about ten hours a day connected to a charger. iPods are notoriously poor for battery life, while many laptops require one charge on the way to work, and another for the train journey home.

Changing attitudes

Energy experts say we need to change our mindset when it comes to IT equipment. Instead of switching it off, we're still largely inclined to leave it on. Households across the UK now spend around 10% of their electricity bill on standby power. That's equivalent to the annual output of two-and-a-half 700MW power stations. "People just leave things on overnight," says Adrian Arnold, head of partner marketing at the Energy Saving Trust.

Just as your dad would chide you for leaving the landing light on, Arnold says it's time for our generation to get angry with family members and colleagues who waste power. "People aren't engrained into switching off devices," he says. "When my wife uses the PC and she doesn't switch off the ADSL router, it really annoys me." It might not save his marriage, but unplugging that router would save him a few quid a year.

Chief executives need to get angry, too. How happy will shareholders be to know that 70% of firms have no plans to reduce their carbon emissions, as revealed by recent research from the Green Technology Initiative? It's sloppiness at best, and at worst a downright dereliction of a company's duty to maximise profits. Not to mention its civic duty.

While we're talking about correcting attitudes, let's not forget the IT manufacturers. Many of them like to flash their environmental credentials, but how many really make an effort where it counts: on product design? It's all well and good having nice clean fascias, but tucking the power button away on the back of an LCD screen doesn't encourage people to switch it off. That's assuming there's a power button - the only way to turn off some devices is to yank the plug from the wall. "When people started to make power buttons harder to find, we absolutely went to town on them," says Arnold.

Leading the fight

At PC Pro, we're going to keep applying the same pressure on IT equipment manufacturers. When they omit power buttons or make them hard to reach, we'll let you know in our product reviews. And from this issue, we'll reveal the power consumption of every PC and monitor we test.

Yet, if our Switch IT Off campaign is to make a lasting difference, we need your support. We need PC Pro's legions of IT professionals to set an example in their homes and workplaces. Ensure your PC and its peripherals are connected to a single power strip, such as our recommended OneClick Intelligent Mains Panel, so that none of your devices wastes a single watt after you've finished. Don't leave chargers needlessly plugged in. Check that office PCs, printers and photocopiers are shut down before you leave work in the evening, and especially at weekends. Yes, these devices may take a minute or two longer to get going on Monday morning, but by the time you've made that first cup of coffee all your equipment should be raring to go.

We're not claiming the world will end next week if you don't switch off your kit - you're intelligent enough to draw your own conclusions on global warming. Yet, it doesn't take a PhD in ecology to work out that turning off unused equipment can save the average home hundreds of pounds per year, as the illustration opposite shows. There really is no excuse not to Switch IT Off.

Author: Barry Collins