Turn off your PC. Go on, do it. Not right now, of course, because that would prevent you reading the rest of this article, but the next time you leave your desk at work for the evening or weekend, do us all a favor and shut it down.

You may be aware, from either the masses of news coverage, personal experience, or both, that the economy is in a bit of a pickle at the moment. In fact, the current Global Economic Crisis, Credit Crunch, or yet another recession (depending on your point of view) could be the worst we’ve experienced since the Great Depression between the two world wars.

With that in mind, every penny a company can save is important, so as to assure they can ride out the economic downturn, and hopefully resist laying off any staff in order to achieve this. You can help your company by turning off your work computer at night. The added benefit, of course, is one to the environment.

It may not seem like much of an effort to shut a PC down when it’s not going to be used for the next 12 hours (at least) but a surprising number of people don’t do this simplest of tasks. Some companies have a policy of keeping all computers on at night in order to run software updates, but generally speaking, it comes down to sheer laziness.

If you’re one of these lazy people, then you’d do well to read the ‘2009 US PC Energy Report’ recently published by 1E. You’ll find that the actions of you and the millions of other office workers in the U.S. are costing businesses $2.8 billion a year. Hardly a drop in the ocean in these troubled times.

As well as the financial implications, there is an environmental cost to this lax attitude. It’s estimated that 20 million tons of carbon dioxide are produced as a result of idle computers left on overnight. That’s the equivalent of 4 million cars pumping out environmentally-damaging pollutants.

So the next time your company asks for ways in which money can be saved, inform them that those lazy idiots who insist on leaving their PC on overnight in order to save five minutes in the morning are the root cause of a huge chunk of financial mismanagement. Maybe those people should be first out the door if the company does need to shed some staff in the future.

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Entry was posted on Friday, March 27th, 2009 at 11:30 pm under Opinion, Technology.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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