The summer is a great time to talk about energy conservation because a) it's hot as hell and people are going "Was it this hot last year?" and "CRIPES WHAT IF IT'S EVEN MORE RIDICULOUS NEXT YEAR" and b) the people out there with any sense at all are looking around at all their machines turned on or in standby mode and going "Is that thing making heat? AM I PAYING GOOD MONEY TO MAKE HEAT WHICH I THEN HAVE TO PAY MORE MONEY TO GET RID OF?! DAMN THING'S GOT ME COMING AND GOING!"
So, easy stuff first: unplug your phone charger when it's not in use. Haha, just kidding, that accomplishes absolutely nothing. It accomplishes so little that it'll be offset by you driving to the store to buy a new electrical socket a couple of years early because the pins are all loose and knackered from you constantly plugging and unplugging things. Unless you have a crap phone charger that gets warm when you're not charging anything, in which case look through your drawers, or...
...get a mate to look through their drawers for a non-crappy one. Don't just go out and buy a new one, quit buying crap you don't need. While we're at it, uninstall or disable the Facebook app on your phone, and use the mobile site instead - now you don't have to buy a new phone because your four-year-old one runs faster than a brand new shop model, because it's not using two-thirds of its power to turn on your microphone and listen to every word you say.
Avoid crap software in general. A computer takes over a tonne of irreplaceable raw materials to make, a preposterous amount of energy, and - well, if you knew the toll on human health and dignity, you'd never buy a new phone or computer again. I run my businesses from a thirteen-year-old laptop, and it gets stuff done faster than a brand-new shop model because I don't use Windows. Buying new products has a huge cost, both to your wallet and the environment. Secondhand is fine.
@ifixcoinops I still love my 10-year-old Mac Pro, although it’s stuck a couple OS versions back. It does all the stuff it was made to do admirably well. (Chews up & spits out Logic Pro like it was Text Edit) I do have to keep up with Adobe because of bad career choices- I wonder how long they’ll support 10.11.
+ you can generally find them for around $300 on ebay
@rdh @ifixcoinops it’s not a G5 - it’s an Intel.
@Devils_Rancher @ifixcoinops
If it's a PowerPC mac pro, that might be one of the few cases where getting a new pc might be a good idea. iirc the 2014 mac minis have more processing power at around half the energy usage as the last generation PPC Mac Pros.