Everyone is looking for ways to save money these days. So I followed the link that said we could save big money by turning computers off at night.  The headline reads, "Leaving Computers on Overnight = $2.8 Billlion."

Now $2.8 billion sounds pretty impressive. I could use some of that in my budget. Maybe you were thinking more than I. The article does not specify how many computers that entails. However, I think that huge figure must be the entire United States.

They say if you own a business with 1000 computers, your annual savings can be about $28,000 for turning them off every night. Do you run 1000 computers? I don't.

A little math leads me to conclude I can save about $28 per year, a far cry from that 2.8 billion. An added incentive is that shutting my computer down can help it run better. It might avoid needing to reboot in the middle of the day. And PCs function better when they have regular restarts.

There is another advantage to shutting computers down. All the computers the article talked about produce about 20 million tons of carbon dioxide. They say that is about the same as what 4 million cars produce.

My lone computer does not make much impact. However, if we all shut down when we are not using our machines, on a national level we can help turn off those 4 million cars  to save the environment while adding a few pennies to our pockets.