With energy prices rising and likely to continue that trend for the forseeable future, conserving energy not only makes financial sense, but environmental sense as well. To help with these tasks here are a couple of items which are very valuable:

• Smart Power Strip - These are really cool as a single outlet on this strip controls whether or not power is supplied to other outlets on the device. For example, if you plug your TV into the master outlet and your DVD player and cable box into controlled outlets, when your TV is turned off your DVD player and cable box are automatically turned off as well. As you can guess, turning on the TV would turn on these devices as well. There are also ‘always on’ plugs which are ideal for things you don’t want to automatically shut off, such as your answering machine.
• Electricity Usage Meter - Another cool toy. Simply plug this meter into an outlet and then plug in a device (or an entire power strip) into the meter and you can see how much voltage the device is using. This way you can find out exactly how much power your (for example) computer is pulling. Use this meter to find the most power hungry devices in your house and get them under control.

These are just a few of the items out there. Does anyone use any other gizmos which help conserve power?

Not too long ago I wrote about an ‘odd job’ command line tool, but today’s tip focuses on a command line tool which is specifically for controlling power functions: Wizmo.

Wizmo allows you to do tasks such as:

• Turn off your monitor(s)
• Put your computer into standby or hibernation
• Mute/unmute, turn up or down your speaker volume
• Utilize the “gravitron” screensaver

Wizmo is a very small application and offers a lot more features than the one listed above. I have started using this tool at the end of scripts to put the computer into either standby or hibernation when it is done. Additionally, it is nice to have a simple shortcut you can run which turns off your monitors instead of waiting for the Windows timer.

One feature you many not know about Windows is you can easily change how the power button operates. By default it, obviously, turns off the computer but this can be changed so that it puts the computer into standby, hibernate or does nothing.

To make this change:

1. Open the Control Panel.
2. Select the Power Options.
3. In Vista, click the “Change How the Power Button Operates” option on the left. In 2000/XP go to the Advanced tab.
4. Select the appropriate mode.
5. Apply your changes.

I’ve set my computers to hibernate whenever I press the button as it turns the machine off yet saves the system state before doing so. This way I can pick right back up where I left off.

A feature I have come to love is wake on lan which allows you to start a computer remotely across the network. One limitation to it, however, is that you can only send the ‘magic packet’ across your local network.

Well, if you want to be able to wake your computer from anywhere then check out this tool from DSL Reports. Using the Wake On Lan tool on their web page, you can send a wake up packet to your computer from anywhere. This is completely awesome as you can have your computer off or in standby and have it wake up on demand.

One problem I run into on systems which have USB devices plugged into them when resuming from [S3] standby is an error message which reads:

Power Surge on Hub Port: A USB Device has exceeded the power limits of its hub port.

This message is followed by a dialog box which forces you to reset the USB device’s connection. Of course, this can get somewhat annoying as everytime I resume from standby I am greeted with this error.

The fix is to force the USB hub to work in USB 1.1 mode versus 2.0 mode. This Microsoft KB article explains how to make the change.

Of course, when going from USB 2.0 to 1.1 you will lose transfer speed, but in most cases you probably will not be able to tell the difference. If you get this error message and you absolutely need to keep the device in USB 2.0 mode, set your system’s BIOS to use S1 standby (instead of S3) as this will not completely power down the device and should work normally upon resuming.

One of the drawbacks to putting your system to sleep is that certain devices or programs can be ‘messed up’ due to the system powering down. This can cause a problem when the system resumes as when power is restored, the item may think it is malfunctioning. If this is a problem, try Hibernate Trigger.

This unique program allows you to specify a command to run prior to and restoring from standby or hibernate mode. For example, if Program X isn’t standby friendly then you can have Hibernate Trigger run a command to shutdown the program prior to entering standby and then have the program restarted upon resume. If you need to perform multiple tasks, simply create a batch file and have that executed.

Hibernate Trigger is a great utility to have and you can’t beat the price (free).

When I am not using my computer, I like to put it into standby mode. This helps save power and cuts down on the heat output when I am not using the computer. A shortcut (literally) that I use is a command line batch script to put the system into standby.

From this Microsoft article, the command is simply:

%windir%\System32\rundll32.exe powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState

The article states that if hibernation is enabled on the machine, running the above command will hibernate the system instead of putting it into standby (so make sure you have the power settings how you want them).

You could also use this command to put your system into standby/hibernation after running nightly scheduled tasks. This would ensure your computer stays in lower power mode while you are away.

If you have a media center (or any other) PC which utilizes a remote control or some other USB powered device, you may find that when you resume from standby the device needs to be “reset”. Having this annoyance is probably enough to set your computer to never go into standby. Instead of jumping to this ‘drastic’ measure, check out Slick Solutions’ MCE Standby Tool.

If any of these problems below (from their web site) sound familiar to you, MCE Standby may be the answer:

• Not properly going into and out of standby.
• Unable to use the right sleep state (fans keep running).
• Not going back to standby after a scheduled recording or guide update.
• Not (reliably) waking for a scheduled recording.
• Unable to wake from S3 standby using remote.
• Unable to put the system standby by remote.
• Hardware drivers preventing entering standby.
• Black screen of death on resume from standby.
• Blank screen requiring a button press on resume from standby.
• Problematic USB devices at resume.

The MCE Standby tool offers lots of configuration options and each one is both documented and screenshot’ed on their web site. Give this program a try if standby mode has frustrated you in the past and maybe it help.