What we saw today is a pretty clear indication that you can save some serious wattage by being a little more responsible with your computer usage. All of this does beg the question, though: is distributed computing worth it? Stanford's Folding@Home, for example, has done a lot of great work. But how much money are you donating along with those extra CPU cycles? Well, at idle, my tower drew 121.2W, and running F@H SMP client, it drew 174W. 50W is a lot when you're talking about phantom energy loss, but for an intended cause, you're spending about $6.47 a month and about $78.63 per year. This expense, it seems, comes right down to the user's preference, as it would with any charity. Whether or not you fold for Stanford is up to you, but now you know what it costs on a Core2 Quad Q6600.

Another lesson we've learned is that if you're not using your computer, but you're going to leave it on, at least turn off your monitor. The darned things pull 60W, which is plenty of energy. But, a step further, which you may not have considered, would be to turn off that second monitor if you're not using it. During games or watching movies, shut off your secondary monitor. If you're just listening to music while you do something else, shut them both off. At the very least, though, make sure you have your computer set to shut off displays when it's been idle for more than 5 minutes.

When all is said and done, you should be flipping off your power strip when you're not using your computer. It will not only save you money, but helps you go green a little bit. I remember when, not too long ago, energy was 12 cents per kWH, and now it's more than 50% more than that in my state. Gas prices aren't the only rising expense, and you can save yourself a bit of money by just clicking a switch with your toe every night. Now, that certainly seems worth it.

If you have any comments or questions, or have something you want us to measure, we encourage you to come discuss this article in the forums.