The summer is a great time to talk about energy conservation because a) it's hot as hell and people are going "Was it this hot last year?" and "CRIPES WHAT IF IT'S EVEN MORE RIDICULOUS NEXT YEAR" and b) the people out there with any sense at all are looking around at all their machines turned on or in standby mode and going "Is that thing making heat? AM I PAYING GOOD MONEY TO MAKE HEAT WHICH I THEN HAVE TO PAY MORE MONEY TO GET RID OF?! DAMN THING'S GOT ME COMING AND GOING!"
So, easy stuff first: unplug your phone charger when it's not in use. Haha, just kidding, that accomplishes absolutely nothing. It accomplishes so little that it'll be offset by you driving to the store to buy a new electrical socket a couple of years early because the pins are all loose and knackered from you constantly plugging and unplugging things. Unless you have a crap phone charger that gets warm when you're not charging anything, in which case look through your drawers, or...
...get a mate to look through their drawers for a non-crappy one. Don't just go out and buy a new one, quit buying crap you don't need. While we're at it, uninstall or disable the Facebook app on your phone, and use the mobile site instead - now you don't have to buy a new phone because your four-year-old one runs faster than a brand new shop model, because it's not using two-thirds of its power to turn on your microphone and listen to every word you say.
Avoid crap software in general. A computer takes over a tonne of irreplaceable raw materials to make, a preposterous amount of energy, and - well, if you knew the toll on human health and dignity, you'd never buy a new phone or computer again. I run my businesses from a thirteen-year-old laptop, and it gets stuff done faster than a brand-new shop model because I don't use Windows. Buying new products has a huge cost, both to your wallet and the environment. Secondhand is fine.
@ifixcoinops More people need to hear this. A second-hand computer running a Unix-like OS is almost certainly JUST FINE for most people.
Problem is, running your own Unix means you gotta be your own sysadmin, and most people are like "ain't nobody got time for that".
@starbreaker In my experience (Ubuntu and Ubuntu Mate) stuff just works. No messing around with trying to find drivers, no maintenance, no malware. Yes, you can really screw up an Ubuntu installation if you mess around under the hood without knowing what you're doing - but Windows will really screw *itself* up unless you know *exactly* what you're doing.
@ifixcoinops @starbreaker Lubuntu, powering my parents and grandparents 14 year old desktops. I think the user experience is even smoother then when they were running XP. 😜
