Last week I blogged about BunnieCakes, the yummy vegan and organic cupcakes created by Miami vegetarian Mariana Cortez, who substitutes butter, eggs and refined sugar for natural, dairy-free ingredients. Did I mention they come in endless flavors including key lime and dark chocolate?

Now BunnieCakes is giving away a dozen cupcakes to a lucky Ecozine reader! All you have to do is comment on this post by May 24 at midnight. June 4 at midnight. The winner will receive 12 cupcakes in the two flavors of his/her choice delivered at his/her doorstep. continue

Treehugger.com had an article today on a free software called granola that assesses your computer’s energy usage and scales back your processor, letting you consume about 30 percent less energy. The program only works for Windows and Linux, so I can’t install it for now on my Mac.

Like many of us nowadays, I spend most of the day in front of a computer, so the article got me thinking about other ways I could reduce my computer’s energy consumption. I mean, I always turn it off when I’m not using it -one of the mayor causes for phantom power – but there has to be a way to maybe turn off some of the functions I’m not using, put them in a dormant state so to call it.

After a little research and 5 minutes of adjustments, my Mac now runs on a more efficient mode.

This is what I did, which I hope will help you reduce your phantom power too:

1-Change your computer settings. If you have a PC, go to your Control Panel and open the Power Settings option. This is under System Preferences and Energy Saver on Macs. Change the settings to the lowest power or energy saver setting (in Macs, do it for both, the battery and the power adapter). Changing this setting will also give your battery a larger lifespan, and you can leave it like this whenever you don’t need to run a heavy graphics program or stream video.

2-Change your screen saver settings. This is also found in the Control Panel in PCs and under System Preferences/ Energy Saver on Macs. Set it to 10 minutes or less to conserve the maximum amount of energy. You can also schedule sleep times to make sure you never leave it on at night.

3-Unplug when off. I didn’t know this, but even leaving the computer off but plugged wastes power – also known as vampire power. So remember to plug off every night.

4-Install a free power management tool. This is great for your computer because it actually lets you know how much you are saving and how you are doing. Each tool has additional functions so functions, so pick the one that works best for you. Confession: The only tool for Mac is not free, so I didn’t install any for now, but pledged to be more careful about always turning my laptop off when not using it. However, if you have a PC, installing a free tool is a no-brainer:
-Power Manager is the only tool available for Macs
and lets you schedule sleep time and shut downs. $29.
-CO2 Saver 1.0.0.15 shows your savings on your desktop. Free.
-Edison, tells you now only your daily CO2 emission reductions and lets you compete with other users (only for PCs). Free.
-TweakVista assesses your daily consumption and tells you want you can do to do better compared to others (only for PCs). $19.95
-Auto Shutdown Genius lets you schedule clean ups of your recycling bin, hibernation times, and shutdown times. $29.95.
-Auto Power-on and Shut-down 2.20 lets you control standby, hibernation, shutdowns and rebooting. $24.95
-Auto Shut Down is a very simple tool that lets you schedule shut downs. $4.
-granola shuts down your processor when not in use, and shows you in a cool chart how much energy you are saving. Free.

Image courtesy of smaedli