Here are the equipment that you may want to consider start removing from the wall as from today. Each one of them consumes very little, below 10 W, but when we add them up you will see that the consumption is somewhat significant. You can also connect them to a surge protector and simply turn off the surge protector after you finish using your computer – because all equipment from this category coincidentally are computer parts. They are also equipment that a lot of people simply forget to turn off – simply because some of them like modems and routers don’t have an on/off switch!

The equipment that had a somewhat significant consumption when in standby or idle mode were the following:

• Computer: 1.5 W
• Broadband router (Linksys WRT54G): 1.5 - 2 W
• Laser printer (HP LaserJet 1020): 2.1 W
• Cable modem (Arris TM502G): 3.5 W
• Cable modem (Ambit 10C018): 5 W
• Computer speakers (Logitech X-530): 3.3 W (turned off), 7.5 W (idle)

As you can see, our computer is still consuming 1.5 W even when it is theoretically turned off!

Our laser printer has an on/off switch that really turns off the printer, but most people leave the printer on the “ready” status (i.e., turned on but idle) when the computer is on, and some even forget to turn it off after turning the PC off. But be careful, as we found out something really important. When we turn our laser printer on it heats itself up and runs its motors to see whether there is any jammed paper inside, a process that consumes a lot of power (around 300 W) during a short period of time. So it is definitely NOT advisable to keep turning on and off your laser printer just to try saving 2 W, as whenever you turn it on it will waste around 300 W during its initial heating and paper jam detection process. So if you are going to use your laser printer during the day, just leave it turned on. Turn it off only when you know for sure that you won’t use it for the whole day.

Modem, broadband router and computer speakers are components that almost everybody forgets to turn off, and the problem is that routers and modems do not have an on/off switch! So these equipment should be manually removed from the AC outlet or you should use a surge protector and simply turn the surge protector off after using the computer. Notice, however, that by doing this probably your modem will get a different IP address from your internet provider when you turn it back on. Several people leave their modems turned on so they can stay with the same IP address. For the majority of users this doesn't make any difference.

When we forget our speakers turned on it is still consuming a lot of power for an equipment that is doing nothing (7.5 W). And we also found something really annoying about our speakers: even with its switch on the off position it still consumes 3.3 W. Can you believe that? So our recommendation of connecting everything to a surge protector and turning it off after finish using the computer makes even more sense.