You’ve probably already seen Energy Star labels, which apply to PCs, HDTVs, and other consumer tech–but that’s just the starting point. Generally speaking, a few more labels are worth keeping an eye out for when you’re shopping for power-saving gadgets.
#TURN OFF GRID WINDOWS 10 PLUS#
If possible, grab yourself an 80 Plus Gold-certified PSU–they typically run at around 87 percent to 90 percent. Look for a PSU that is labeled “80 Plus”–such models are certified to run at higher than 80 percent efficiency. Since your PSU isn’t perfectly efficient, it draws more power than it provides to your PC, and loses that energy in the process. Although your PC’s power supply might be rated at 600 watts, that only refers to the amount of power the PSU is guaranteed to provide your PC. The first target is your power supply unit. If you refuse to abandon your home-built desktop PC, you can still make a few changes to cut electricity consumption. If you truly want to be good about keeping consumption low, open the Power Settings control panel and choose a less energy-expensive plan (I’d recommend the ‘Power saver’ plan as a good starting point) to cut your usage further.
#TURN OFF GRID WINDOWS 10 MAC#
If you don’t feel like going to the Mac side, the Dell Latitude 13, Lenovo ThinkPad Edge, and Dell Latitude E5510 all offer high green power scores (90, 88, and 87, respectively), so you have a good selection of laptops that can help cut your electricity bill, at different prices and sizes.
In our green power testing, Apple’s 11-inch (1.4GHz) and 13-inch (1.86GHz) MacBook Air models topped our charts, with the former winning a green score of 91 out of 100 and the latter earning a 90.
#TURN OFF GRID WINDOWS 10 PC#
If you’re really looking to minimize power consumption, you’ll want to do most of your computing on a netbook or ultraportable PC with a low-voltage processor, such as an Intel Atom or a CULV (Consumer Ultra Low Voltage) processor. As far as basic computing needs go, laptops already use less juice than desktop systems do in order to maximize battery life. Wouldn’t it be nice if someone designed computers that go easy on the electricity? Of course, they already do–those machines are called laptops. Now, let’s put together a low-power PC setup. Watts Up gear is a bit pricey for home use, though, so if you don’t need some of the advanced features you can grab a Kill-A-Watt EZ plug load meter for a fraction of the price online. At PCWorld, we track power usage with Watts Up electricity-plug load meters, and they’re pretty simple to use–just plug one in and watch the numbers come in. Microsoft’s Joulemeter project looks promising, but it’s still in alpha and I wasn’t able to launch it successfully on my computer. If you want to selectively apply lines around specific cells or ranges of cells, you should use borders instead of, or in addition to, gridlines.Unless you’re taking meticulous notes on your monthly electricity bill, you won’t be able to really eyeball your consumption. Gridlines are always applied to the entire worksheet or workbook and can't be applied to specific cells or ranges. To retain the fill color and still see lines that serve to separate cells, you can use borders instead of gridlines. If you simply change the fill color to white, the gridlines will remain hidden. Keep in mind that you must remove the fill entirely. To see or print the gridlines for these cells, you must remove the fill color. If you apply a fill color to cells on a worksheet, you won't be able to see or print the cell gridlines for those cells. Gridlines cannot be customized in the same way that borders can. People often confuse borders and gridlines in Excel.
If you want, you can change the color of the gridlines for a particular worksheet. When working with gridlines, consider the following:īy default, gridlines are displayed on worksheets using a color that is assigned by Excel. Gridlines are used to distinguish cells on a worksheet.