Each year, Earth Day serves as the great reminder that we can all be doing a little more to help our planet. Small changes can make a big impact- the best part is these changes can be good for your wallet too! Below are a few simple tips for conserving PC energy that should become part of your daily routine. 1. Adjust the brightness on your monitor The brighter the monitor, the more energy it uses. You can reduce your monitor’s brightness when it is in a dark room as our eyes will be more sensitive to light. A dimmer display will also help reduce eye strain. 2. Turn off your screensaver Screensavers are not energy savers. In fact, certain graphics-intensive screensavers can cause the computer to burn twice as much energy and prevent a computer from entering sleep mode. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), turning off the screensaver can save you $25–$75 a year on energy costs. 3. Switch to power-saving mode Configure your notebook or desktop to optimize you’re power-savings. This can be done from the Power Options icon located in your Windows Control Panel. By changing these settings to the times indicated in the picture below, you can help reduce the power your computer draws when you are not using it. 4. Recycle old PCs and peripherals By recycling, hazardous metals are extracted and plastic pieces are removed and reused to make new products. You can find out more about Lenovo’s recycling services by...
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Howard Locker works as part of Lenovo’s research and development team that’s charged with looking at what will be the next hot technologies down the road. As Howard recounts in this post, the days of VGA are coming to an end. Display Technology Movin On and Up in Digital World It’s time to say goodbye to VGA as the primary video connector in laptops and desktops. A group of industry chip and PC-makers recently announced news of support for the transition. VGA has been the video connector on all computers since 1987 - that’s before the Internet, before HDTVs and before digital video with audio. VGA can’t handle the demands of our new Internet connected, on-demand HD quality video streaming, so it’s time to move on to new digital video interfaces, such as DisplayPort and HDMI, that solve today’s video needs and at the same time, are optimized for thinner and lighter laptops. Direct Connection to VGA VGA is part of our IBM legacy. IBM invented VGA as part of the 1987 PS/2 systems that replaced the original PC product line. At the time, people considered a 640x480 resolution with 256 possible colors a major...
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As a Lenovo master inventor and engineer, I have to practice what I preach when it comes to good PC energy management practices. Fortunately, I have the advantage of a development and customer-facing role, so I have a dual perspective for developing power saving tools like Power Manager. What always amazes me is the simple things you can do to your notebook with minimal effort to achieve huge energy savings. I often get questions about making batteries more efficient. While we’re investigating this, batteries already are pretty efficient now. In the meantime, what really has led to more efficient notebooks has been focusing on increasing the efficiency of the laptop itself – the guts inside, like processors, LED displays and tools to manage the software that runs on it. Here’s an easy example. All you have to do is set your power schemes to suspend when your PC is inactive for 15 minutes or more or when you close your lid. Suspending consumes less than 1 watt of energy. Your work is saved and when you open your lid and/or touch your keyboard within seconds you are back exactly where you left off. In this 'suspend' mode, you can extend the life of a fully charged battery from 3-5 hours to 50 plus hours. However, if you are not going to use your PC for many hours (overnight, etc.), it's best to allow your computer to 'hibernate.'...
