NightlyShutdown software
NightlyShutdown software
Written by Ken Thursday, 03 July 2008 18:10
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Save money and energy with NightlyShutdown
NightlyShutdown price from free
Being environmentally friendly isn’t just about saving the planet any more – it can save considerable amounts of money too. With the average desktop PC setup costing around 1.5 pence per hour to run, making sure computers are switched off at night and at weekends could save businesses hundreds of pounds per computer every year. NightlyShutdown is one product that allows system administrators to easily make sure every computer under their control is turned off for the night.
Making sure the computer is turned off before leaving is often the last thing on the mind of the average office worker – beating the rush hour, planning what to do for the weekend, or making sure that invoice is in the postbag are often more important. Office PCs are often left running all night and weekend, and even with modern power saving features and screensavers this will result in a large amount of power being consumed.
UK-based software company ProvenWorks is aiming to make it easy for system administrators to ensure unused computers are turned off for the night. Their product NightlyShutdown is designed to automatically shut down a computer at a set time of day, in case someone has forgotten to turn their machine off.
NightlyShutdown is free to home users and small businesses (with under 10 computers). Larger businesses can licence it for £35 for every 10 computers – just £3.50 per computer. Potentially the product could pay for itself in just a few weeks!
The program runs as a service on Windows 2000, XP, Vista and 2003 server (Linux, OS X and versions for older Windows operating systems are apparently in the pipeline) and sits in the background, controlled by registry settings. It can be configured not to shut down if a user is still logged on (useful if someone is working late) and can also be set to perform a forced shutdown (which will lose any unsaved user data).
The service is easy to install, however configuration can currently only be done by editing the registry. While this is fine for sysadmins, regular users might be a bit frightened. ProvenWorks does include a sample registry file with the program though.
For system administrators in charge of large networks, NightlyShutdown can be remotely deployed to every computer using Active Directory, thus making it very easy to set up. Different groups of computers can be controlled using different active directory policies (so the sales team, who sneak off to the pub at 4pm, can be shut down before the programming team, who always works late).
How much could you save?
Interested in how much money we could save in the DinkyKitty offices, we had a look at the EnergyStar website. They provide a nifty energy calculator for PC equipment, allowing you to enter details about your equipment and energy costs, and find out how much it’s costing you. (http://www.eu-energystar.org/en/en_008b.shtml)
Computer energy use is of course dependant on hardware and also on what software is running, since modern PCs reduce power to the processor when they are idle. Screensavers can instruct the monitor to turn off (although it’s worth noting that running a graphically intensive screensaver with your monitor off might drain more juice than a blank screen with the monitor on since it would force the computer to work harder!)
While it’s fair to say none of the DinkyKitty office computers count as “average”, since we don’t currently have any way of measuring power consumption we used the EnergyStar default values for computer equipment. According to the site, a multimedia PC uses around 146 watts of energy when on, and 5 watts in standby. A “value” 19inch LCD uses around 38 watts when on, and 1.2 watts in standby. A quick glance at our electricity bill showed we are paying around 11p per kilowatt hour (KWh), although large companies will probably pay less than this.
As a rough calculation, given those values, leaving a computer on for 24 hours a day, every day, will cost around £120 in energy costs alone over a year. If the computer only runs from 9am to 6pm (9 hours a day) then it would cost us around £50 a year. That’s a saving of over £70 a year in electricity alone, for one computer, just by making sure it’s turned off when not in use. Having the computer off over weekends and holidays will save even more (I estimate a total saving of around £85 per year).
With those kind of savings, NightlyShutdown seems like a huge bargain at £3.50 per computer. Even if your staff are normally diligent about turning their computers off, it only takes a few weekends of forgetfulness to recoup the cost.
I can see a few downsides to making sure computers are turned off. Firstly, waiting for a computer to boot up in the morning will take a few minutes and potentially lose some productivity (although you could argue most people aren’t very productive in that first 5 minutes anyway). Secondly, to be effective the program will need to force a shutdown, but that risks losing unsaved user work.
Likewise, the configuration via registry settings might scare off some home and small business users – although ProvenWorks told me they are working on a registry file tool for their website which will build the registry file for you.
Conclusions
Given how much NightlyShutdown costs, and the ease of deployment, it has the potential to save businesses large amounts on their electricity bills, whilst also reducing carbon footprint – both things that appeal to shareholders these days!
Even for home users the savings can be considerable, and I can think of some fringe benefits as well – having the computer switch off at 11pm every night might make sure the kids go to bed on time!
NightlyShutdown by ProvenWorks
Price: free for home and small business, £35 per 10 computer licence