ICTworks

When you’re working in rural areas, electricity is often very scarce. Your only source of power may be a battery array, which may cost you $10-per-watt to install and recharge via solar power. That means a 100W system would cost you around $1,000 in solar panels, batteries, charge controller and wiring – installed. So every Watt you can save in power consumption matters a great deal.

If you’re running a Linux-based computing system, you now have a new ally, courtesy of Intel. LessWatts.org is a community focused on saving power with Linux, bringing developers, users, and sysadmins together to share software, optimizations, and tips and tricks.

Here’s just a few ways LessWatts can help you reduce power usage with laptops, desktops, and servers, without updating any software

1. Enable the power aware SMP scheduler
2. Use SATA link power management
3. Enable WiFi power management
4. Check for unused Bluetooth
5. Use gigabit ethernet speeds only when needed

But LessWatts offers more than just tips and tricks, they’re actively developing power-saving projects to reduce your energy footprint. Energy savings that matters in both the middle of Mali and the middle of Manhattan.