The Right Way

The IT field is extremely competitive with many trying to do anything to improve their chances for getting a position. Especially if you are just starting out, certifications such as CompTIA’s A+ and Network+ can go a long way towards getting your first job. There are others you should consider such as the Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician (MSDST), Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA), and more depending on your specific career path. Even though it would be nice to have as many certifications as possible on your resume, the cost per certification most of the time is in the range of 100-300 dollars.

In order to pass the exam, a lot of your time would be spent learning the necessary material. Reading a book corresponding with the certification would be the bulk of your studying. As the exam questions are periodically updated, it would be preferable to buy the most recently released book and research your required material online. It can also help to purchase practice exams to help you test your ability to pass. As these tests usually cost less than half the expense of the exams, it can be cost efficient to buy them rather than risk failing and paying the exam fee twice.

If you pass the exam, then you have the benefit of adding the certification to your resume and have improved your chances of landing a job in the IT field, as well as a certificate you can proudly display on your wall. If by chance you failed the exam, don’t give up just yet. There’s no mandatory wait time in between the first and second exam attempt, so you can restudy and try again. Also the exams are pass or fail, so it only matters that you meet or exceed the minimum score. Prometric and Pearson VUE are two businesses that you can sign up for online, locate a nearby testing center, and schedule the exams.

You might be surprised to hear that electronic devices still consume power even when they’re turned off – pretty much anything that plugs into a wall outlet does. This power is referred to as “standby power,” and it’s commonly used to provide some sort of feature – like an infrared receiver listening for a remote, a computer waiting for the ON button to be pressed, or a DVD player displaying the current time. However, this standby load often provides no benefits at all.

Watts are used to measure the rate at which power is consumed, and power usage over time is usually measured (and billed for) in kilowatt hours (kW-h). The cost varies greatly depending on where you live, but the U.S. national average is about 12 cents per kW-h. In California, the average price for residential power is 15 cents and commercial power is one cent cheaper. The average American household (in 2007) consumed 936 kilowatt hours each month.

Although most power is used by appliances such as air conditioning systems and refrigerators, your electronics do consume a significant amount of power. But how much exactly? To answer that question, we’ve prepared the following table showing the typical power usage of computers, monitors, and peripherals.

	Off / Standby	Sleep	Not in Use	In Use	Peak
Desktop PC	2	3-4	60-75	88-105	120
Wide 19" LCD	2	2	2	27	36
Std 17" LCD	1	1	1	25	36
Small Laserjet	1	4	4	835	835
Laptop, 15" LCD	4-5	5	31	45	70
PC Speakers	2	N/A	2-3	4	12
10/100 Switch	N/A	N/A	N/A	3	3
VoIP Phone	N/A	N/A	2	2	2

So if your computer idles at 65 watts, then it would consume at least 46.8 kilowatt hours in a month (30 days) if you never turned it off. And if you live in California where power is 15 cents per kW-h, then you’d be adding $7.02 to your electric bill. Of course the cost will be a lot more depending on how much you use the monitor and peripherals, but at a minimum, your printer, monitor, switch, and phone will add another 14 watts for a total of 79 watts and $8.53.

Let’s say you wanted to lower expenses and you kept your computer and peripherals off at night by turning the power strip off (which stops almost all standby power usage). If your night is eight hours long, this would only save you $2.84 each month. However, if you shut down your computer and didn’t turn off the power strip – thereby losing some power – you would still save $2.27. The power lost at night due to standby power modes is only 57 cents in this case – not even worth considering.

Even so, a few vendors are marketing “smart” power strips which can shut off some outlets when power usage on a control outlet gets low enough. So if your computer is on the control outlet and it goes to sleep, then the Smart Strip would turn off all power to peripherals on the other outlets. In our typical setup, these peripherals consumed only 14 watts of standby power, and even assuming the computer would be off or asleep for 15 hours each day, the most you could save in a month would be 95 cents. Hardly enough to justify the expense – both of money and energy – of a Smart Strip.

There’s practically no end of shiny new gadgets and software to run on them, and it’s easy to forget about what happens to all this stuff when it becomes obsolete. Much of it is eventually thrown in the trash and will end up in a landfill. This is unfortunate because electronic waste often contains toxic substances such as lead and mercury, which in some landfills may seep into a water source. And it’s another kind of waste altogether when trashed hardware contains valuable metals such as gold and copper that could have been reused.

Sadly, according to the EPA, the United States does not have any comprehensive regulations for the disposal of electronic waste. But while the Federal government is behind the times, California and many other state governments are not. These state regulations differ greatly in their scope and effectiveness, so here we will only talk about the laws in California.

California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control classifies computers, their peripherals, cell phones, monitors, media players, and similar devices as “Electronic Waste” – also known simply as “e-waste.” This category is also a subset of a larger group which the DTSC refers to as “Universal Waste.” And while this name sounds relatively harmless, it’s a horrible misnomer. Universal Waste, according to the DTSC, is hazardous waste that contains toxic substances – such as refrigerators, washers, and other household appliances.

By law in California, it is illegal to throw e-waste in the trash, and many programs have been established to help businesses and consumers recycle their old electronic devices. Even so, finding out how to recycle e-waste can be confusing, and it isn’t always free. Many retailers have either voluntarily or legally been obliged to accept e-waste at their stores, but of course they don’t handle the recycling themselves, and there’s little guarantee that it would be done properly. Plus, these retailers usually accept only specific types of devices – for example, a T-Mobile store will only accept old cell phones.

In our opinion, the best way to recycle is to look for “recycling events” hosted by local e-waste collection companies in collaboration with city governments. At these events, you can usually drop off all kinds of e-waste without any fees. For San Diego, you can find a schedule of local recycling events on SanDiego.gov (More on San Diego’s recycling program). Outside of these events, most collection companies charge fees for some of the devices they accept, and many of them also offer additional services such as document destruction or waste pickups.

If you can’t wait for the next event or there won’t be one in your area, you can find the nearest collector with CalRecycle’s directory. And if you have your doubts about a particular collector or recycler, you can use the California DTSC website to find out what a company is licensed for. There you can see whether the collector does its own recycling or ships it elsewhere. It’s also a good idea to make sure your collection company doesn’t ship waste outside California where regulations for the safe handling of toxic materials is lacking or unenforced.