One of our forum hosts, Dave Welp, suggested these quick, power-saving tips:

1. Look for abandoned telecom equipment like old modems and PBX; search for un-utilized or under-utilitized servers or computers used by former staff and volunteers.

2. Clean up your power strip: Look for plugs to those old calculators or speakers.

3. Electronics continue to consume electricity even when in an off state, so either turn them off at a power strip, or unplug them entirely. 

More tips like these can be found on our energy reduction mini-tips page.

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Enter our contest! Read this post, take two simple actions and complete a quick survey! Read on for more info.

Part 1 of this series listed the five actions we recommend that you take to reduce the power use of your computer. Part 2 explained in more detail, two cost-saving actions and tells you how to complete those two actions. This post, fills in the details about two more recommendations.

Upfront Cost, but Should Save You Money Within the Year

3.    Order a smart power strip.

Light green: easy individual actions

These types of power strips automatically turn off your peripherals (monitor, speakers, desk lights) when you shut down your computer and generally consume only 1 watt while on. Plug your computer into the main (switching outlet) and then plug your monitor, speakers, printer or other accessories into the other outlets. When you shut down your computer, the peripherals will shut off automatically. These strips also have always on ports for items like a fax machine that would need to remain on after the computer is off.

Welcome to TechSoup GreenTech's Unpower Yourself! campaign. We're having a contest to encourage you to reduce your computer's energy comsumption. Read this post, take two simple actions, complete a quick survey, and you'll be eligible to win!

Global warming is happening because of a buildup of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, most of them produced by power plants that burn fossil fuels to generate electricity. Information and communications technology consumes a good deal of electricity, much of which is wasted as heat, consumed by computers and monitors needlessly left on, or used to cool hardware that is not running efficiently.

More than half the electricity used by IT is outside the data center and it is very easy for you to make small changes that will have a significant positive impact on both the environment and your wallet. It's not always easy to get a significant number of individuals to take these easy actions, but we can reach more people with your help.

Here are five things you can do quickly to decrease your IT energy use:

Whether you're a regular TechSoup user or haven't heard of us til now, we've got a free webinar coming up that will likely show you something new about how you can get more out of the variety of (free) services we offer to nonprofits and libraries.

Learn How TechSoup Can Help Your Organization

Join TechSoup.org content creators, community leaders, and customer service support on November 12 from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon Pacific for a tour of how your organization can use all that TechSoup has to offer to improve your technology and help reach your mission. TechSoup, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is working toward a time when every nonprofit and social benefit organization will have the technology resources and knowledge they need to operate at their full potential.

We'll walk you through the process of registering and requesting donated and discounted products from more than 35 donor partners like Microsoft and Adobe. We'll also take you on a virtual tour of other resources in TechSoup's tech arsenal including;

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Here's an interesting post by Jeff Atwood about solid-state hard drives (thanks David!). SSDs have been around in various forms for a long time, but only in recent years have manufacturers started seriously marketing them to consumers as an alternative to traditional hard drives. In early 2008, both Apple and Dell started shipping high-end laptops with SSDs only; others have followed suit since then. As Kevin points out in Should You Upgrade to Windows 7?, Windows 7 improves performance for solid-state drives markedly over XP and Vista.

A drive with no moving parts should be faster, more energy efficient, and less susceptible to failure, right? In theory, yes, but the reality might be more complicated. From Atwood's article:

I was an early solid state (SSD) drive adopter with my last laptop purchase, and it was a profound disappointment. Those first and second generation SSD drives turned out to be slower than their magnetic equivalents, despite the eager promises of vendors. On top of that, they were incredibly expensive, and of limited capacity. Running Windows Vista on an early 32 gigabyte SSD was an exercise in pain and frustration on so many levels. What's not to love? A lot.

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TechSoup has been a long-time advocate for refurbished PCs. They're low-cost, they work well for most purposes, and there's a brilliant environmental case for electronics reuse. We offer a whole host of them to nonprofits and libraries through the Refurbished Computer Initiative (to which we just added 16 new products!) and have found it to be a really successful offering for our users.

One major area of controversy about reburbished computers is the question on whether or not the used PC market can last given the diminishing prices of new equipment. Kevin Lo wrote about new, lower-cost netbooks a while back on this blog, posing the question of whether they're ready for the spotlight in nonprofits or not. I think the jury is still out, particularly since many can't run enterprise-class programs and networks, but they may be a good solution for smaller nonprofits.

Jim Lynch, regular blogger and our director of computer recycling and reuse decided to see what research is out there on the subject of whether or not the used computer market is going away any time soon, and has come up with some interesting results in his new article, Is the Used Computer Market Going Away?

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that in the U.S. in 2007, only 18% of electronic waste was collected for recycling and a full 82%, or 1.84 million tons, was disposed of, primarily in landfills.

With these types of statistics, we feel an obligation to do our part to help curb e-waste while at the same time promoting the efficient use of technology to help social benefit organizations most effectively meet their missions.

This post originally appeared on NTEN's blog. This is the second in a fantastic series of guest posts by the authors of Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission.

New applications and technologies are being developed at a rapid pace. This brave new world of touchscreens, aggregated data, and pastel AJAX-based social networking sites, is partly fueled by consumers' desires for faster, lighter, and often cheaper (if not free) technologies.

For hardware, the time that differentiates what is "new" and "passé" is becoming shortened. Your new iPhone is becoming old faster; your familiarity of the popular social networking app du jour may soon become obsolete. How, then, should a nonprofit professional learn about — and selectively embrace — new technologies, when it's hard to keep basic systems running?

Here are some tips to keep in mind: 

• Maintain a healthy dose of skepticism. Every new phone, new software-as-a-service, or a new program will claim to do many wonderful things that have never been done before — until the next version comes out. As a frugal, belt-watching nonprofit professional, it's not too hard to be skeptical of the latest ads and buzzwords. Be judicious when reading marketing material, and always try things out before investing time and money. Look at what it can deliver for your clients and constituents.
• Take advantage of free information. Once you are comfortable in differentiating what is marketing and what is actionable information, use all the free information that is available. In this age of unfettered access and crowdsourcing, you will find analyses and opinions from bloggers and writers just by using your favorite search engine or a community tagging site like delicious.com. While the community's viewpoint may not be aligned with yours, you will find information to form your own, more informed, opinion.
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This post originally appeared on the TechSoupforLibraries.org blog and was written by Stephanie Gerding.

Flip Video has partnered with TechSoup to make its pocket-sized digital camcorders available to 501(c)(3) libraries and nonprofits in the United States. Flip Video's simple camcorders can be used by people with any level of video experience to create, edit, and share movies.

Nonprofits and libraries can use these camcorders to give their staff, volunteers, and constituents the ability to further their causes through digital storytelling in a fun and easy way. The admin fee for two 120-minute camcorders and one tripod is $175. Go to TechSoup Stock to check it out! Consult the eligibility requirements and restrictions page to determine if your organization is eligible to participate in the Flip Video discount program.

TechSoup is about to embark on a grand series of events to help nonprofits learn and demonstrate ways to effectively tell their stories. Some of my favorite causes have captured my loyalty and heart strings through amazing use of video and images. Last year, I blogged about what a hoot the AARP voting video was. I not only signed up for their list (even though I'm far from their 55-year-old target age), I also forwarded it to everyone in my address book. I did the same for The Story of Stuff and The Girl Effect, which we've also mentioned on this blog in the past. Elliot blogged about a group that gives cameras to local groups around the world in order to share their stories. Our partner in Canada featured tips on creating digital stories at a recent Net Tuesday event.

The use of telling stories through photos has also been discussed here various times, with tips on different photo-sharing and slideshow tools discussed. All of these are great examples of using video and images to tell compelling, poignant, and memorable stories about the important work nonprofits contribute for the benefit of the world.

These stories don't need to be fancy or expensive. You don't need a professional videographer or even a professional grade camera to capture video or photos. One of our newest partners, Flip Video, joined TechSoup's donation program this week and is offering low-cost, handheld video cameras to nonprofits for this very purpose. Learn how to use them as well as how to craft your digital story, with these three, upcoming webinars.