Although your electric bill does fluctuate during the year, you might find that it is rather expensive even for the few items you actually use. However, there is a hidden cost in powering up your computers and other equipment. This is not only having the equipment running but having the hardware plugged in also. When products are connected to an electrical outlet the product is always drawing a current, so it is using electricity even when the product is turned off. Unless you have a power outlet with an on/off switch, you need to consider disconnecting equipment from the electrical outlets when not in use. It is possible to save a considerable amount of energy by doing just this.

When running a desktop computer PC, you are going to use anywhere from 60 to 250 watts of electricity. This even includes when the computer is running a screen saver. The power does significantly drop off when it shuts itself down into sleep or standby mode, but it does continue to use a current. When using a Mac computer, the power runs from 87 watts up to 120 watts. Laptop computers do not use as much energy, generally ranging from 15 to 45 watts, depending on the size of the computer and the brand. However, this is generally the amount of watts the equipment uses per hour, so keep that in mind.

In order to determine how much electrify you would save in a year, you need to determine how many hours the equipment is turned on when you are not running it per day. If you are using a computer that uses 100 watts, and you leave it powered on for six hours a day, that is 600 watts. You then multiply it by 365 days a year to determine the total amount of watts you spend money on where it is not necessary.

If you want to find out exactly how much money this is you actually need to contact your electricity provider. The cost for electricity varies between cities and locations throughout the country. They are able to give you this information, which you can then take and multiple it by the total number of watts you use every year on the computers and other hardware. This gives you the final number for how much money you spend that you don’t need to and how much money you’d save in a give year.

While on the face of it, computing has plenty of benefits to the environment. Emails, E-readers and online communication saves paper, while telecommuting and conferencing saves gas. Computers, however, are anything but eco-friendly. The resources used in computer production, combined with the energy demands of computers, servers, data centers, and even the increase in air-conditioning and heating, to keep us comfortable while we spend long hours over the keyboard, all take their toll on the environment.

But there is an increasing trend towards greener computing, with manufacturers and service providers intent on reducing the impact that computer has on the planet, and in particular climate change. However, there is more to eco computing than just getting the latest low energy laptop, any attempt to reduce the environmental impact of our increasing reliance on computers needs to be multifaceted, and the key to all of it is the user.

Hardware and Software Demands

Computers use power, there’s no getting away it. In recent years there has been an increasing drive towards more energy efficient machines, particularly in the laptop industry, with LED backlights replacing energy hungry fluorescent tubes and a move towards digital flash drives rather than the motor driven hard drives. But while this trend towards more energy efficient models is certainly beneficial, trading in your older PC or laptop for a low energy model may be doing more harm than good. The carbon footprint of manufacturing a new machine is huge. Nearly three quarters of the natural resources used in the life cycle of a PC go into its production. Furthermore, discarding a PC also has a detrimental effect on the environment, with the average computer containing dozens of hazardous materials that are difficult to recycle.

Longevity, therefore, is one of the best methods of computer energy consumption, but with the exponential rate computers advance, it is something many users struggle with, but upgrading an older system is far better than replacing it completely. The resources required in producing a new RAM module is far lower than that of producing a new PC – however, upgrading software can have the opposite effect. An independent study by French IT firm GreenIT found that Windows 7 and the latest Microsoft Office requires 70 times more memory than the versions used ten years ago, meaning that if users stick with older programs for longer, the energy consumption of their computer use will be reduced.

Searching and Web Hosting

Web searching may seem like a benign act. When we search for the latest mobile phone, a new organic mattress or quotes for car insurance, it doesn’t occur to most people that quite a large amount of energy has gone into getting us our results. However, in 2009, Harvard physicist Alex Wissner-Gross worked out that a typical Google search on a desktop computer produced about 7 grams of CO2, that’s equivalent to the same energy used in boiling a kettle every two searches! Google has made tremendous strides since then, with their data centers using 50 % less energy than they used to, and intends to power its data centers with 35% from renewable sources by 2012, investing heavily in solar and wind energy, but it still emits 1.5m tonnes of carbon every year, the equivalent of a small country such as Laos.

Websites too use a considerable amount of energy to keep up and running. Servers need to run 24 hours a day and require energy not just to power the machines that hold all the data, but also the air conditioning that maintains the stable temperatures necessary for the servers to keep running. Attempts are being made here too, with an increasing number of web hosting companies looking to renewable energy to power their data centers. Some companies are managing better than others, so choosing the right web hosting company can also go a long way in helping reduce the environmental impact of computing.

And the user can make even further savings in energy use too, by using power saving settings, turning off machines when not in use and resisting the urge to replace machines every year, which can all go a long way in helping to make computing a far greener activity, which will benefit everybody.

Electronics giant Sony has announced that they will begin shipping two Android Honeycomb tablets in September. The two units are the Sony Tablet S and the Tablet P.

The 9.4-inch, 1,280×768-pixel touch-screen of the Tablet S looks like a pad of paper with sheets folded over. Sony already started doing pre-orders for the $499 6GB and 32GB $599 Tablet S models.

Sony first revealed the juicy details of their tablets this spring, officially launching them at the 2011 IFA conference in Berlin. The Android tablets both support WiFi connectivity and the Tablet P will run 4G on AT&T’s mobile broadband network.The new Sony tablets will run using Nvidia’s dual-core Tegra 2 CPU.

The Sony Vaio W Eco-Friendly Laptop is made out of 23% recycled CDs. With a 1366×768 10.1 LED backlit screen, 1.66 GHZ CPU, 1GB Ram, 250GB hard drive, Verizon Wireless mobile broadband, WiFi, Blue tooth, a built in webcam, and a 7 hour battery life, this laptop meets the standard netbook tech spec sheet requirements. A bonus is that it weighs less than 3 pounds.

Because of its eco-friendly construction materials and an included computer case made from 100% recycled PET bottles, this is one of your better bets if you are looking for a greener laptop/notebook solution.

All iPad 1st Generation models have seen a $100 price cut, which means that the basic WiFi-only 16GB unit is now $399. DId you just recently buy the older model? No worries. Anybody who purchased an iPad on or after February 16th, 2011 is entitled to a $100 refund of the price. That said, Apple will only honor the refund for two weeks after the price drop announcement.

The new version of Apple’s extremely popular and successful tablet game-changer, the iPad 2, is due to be released in March or April of 2011. The Apple iPad 2 will (according to multiple reports) be thinner and lighter than the original one and will have a camera on the front, more memory and a faster graphics processor.

Historically, Apple usually updates its products every year. The Wall Street Journal stays well informed when it comes to Apple’s products and have stated that the screen resolution of the iPad 2 will be similar to the current one. In the three fiscal quarters since the original iPad’s launch, nearly $5 billion worth of iPads have been sold.

Have a look at some cool wallpapers for your iPad, and keep your ear to the ground for news about a rumored iPad 3 – which some are saying will be launched this year around the fall.

A new concept design by Cho Youg-jo and Jeoung Jun-tae called ECONUT sports a fold out case with a physical keyboard for the iPad. The iPad fits inside the middle flap of the case and is protected by two additional sides that fold around the iPad. And, it also gives users the ability to prop the device up while watching media in landscape mode.

The best and most eco-friendly thing about this concept design is the material. It’s made of materials from a coconut tree making it environmentally safe and it’s biodegradable. Looks cool too!

The Asus’ new Bamboo U6V Laptop is more eco-minded than most, instead of the shiny plastic normally used on laptop cases, this laptop is presented with laminated bamboo strips, making it both cool-looking and more eco-friendly.

The innovative design of this laptop does not negate the usability and features available. Powered by the Intel Core Duo processor, presented on a 12.1 inch screen, with a massive 4 GB of memory to use, this notebook brings the latest notebook tech to the green front by flawlessly combining nature and technology.

Samsung Galaxy Tab is already proclaiming itself as a force to be reckoned with in the Pad ring, which is clearly dominated by the Apple heavyweight champion – the iPad. How does the Galaxy Tab measure up? Let’s take a closer look.

Samsung Galaxy Tab will be a tad smaller than the current iPad, with a 7-inch screen. Rumor has it though, that Apple has their own 7-inch iPad in the plan. The feature most daunting to Apple, is that the Galaxy Tab will run Flash. This is big news.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab specs include a 3.1 megapixel camera, a QVGA forward-facing camera for video calling, am ARM11 1GHz processor and the usual Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth. A Vietnamese tech site reported a 4000mAh battery, 16GB of internal memory upgradeable to 48GB, and a MicroSD slot with support for cards up to 32GB. The Tab will run on Android 2.2 and feature full Web-browsing and video calling.

The firmware suggests that the Samsung Galaxy Tab will be running Android 2.2, aka Froyo, and Swype gesture recognition software as well. Samsung’s own TouchWiz interface takes care of the touchy screen capabilities. Early reports of the firmware suggested a surprisingly low 800 x 480 resolution, however conflicting reports say that it boasts a 1024 x 600 resolution.

Samsung Mobile will release more information about the Galaxy Tab on September 2 in advance of IFA Berlin 2010.

NEC has just introduced a new eco-friendly NEC E231W LED monitor. This model of monitor
has of a DisplayPort with full 1080p resolution and an ambient light censor.

The new NEC E231W monitor is also energy efficient, consuming less power at only 28W. The monitor costs only $299, which is extremely reasonable.

Other cool stuff about the NEC E231W LED monitor include 250 nits of brightness, a 1,000:1 contrast ratio, 4-way adjustability and a 3 year warranty.

The Multisync E231W uses an LED-backlit panel to increase energy savings by up to 40 percent in comparison to conventional CCFL-backlit LCD monitors. T