The Right Way

Portable storage devices today can be as small as a quarter and still carry gigabytes of data. Devices like flash drives are extremely convenient and a critical asset in both our personal and professional lives. Programmers have taken advantage of the popularity of removable media and created software that can operate independently of the operating system’s registry. PortableApps are applications that can be used without having to install them on each computer you use.

They don’t leave traces or make any changes to the computer they’re plugged into. All settings and changes are saved to the portable drive. PortableApps will work on Windows XP or later and there are equivalent programs for Linux such as www.portools.com. Most of the sites’ programs are open source and all can be downloaded at no cost. There are also no restrictions on the type of portable drive needed. The applications can be installed to memory cards, flash drives, hard drives, and even to media players.

The list of programs available includes Firefox, Google Chrome, OpenOffice, and even a few games such as Sudoku and Warzone 2100. ClamWin and SpyDLLRemover can be download to remove viruses and spyware. There’s also a menu that can be set to launch when you plug in your drive to help you access your applications.

The benefits are extremely useful when on a library or public computer where changes to the computer system is either frowned upon or not allowed. It is also helpful that browser bookmarks, history, and add-ons are stored on and loaded from the removable drive.

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.