About 10 months ago I stumbled onto something purely by luck, and it's made a huge difference in my life; so I wanted to share it with you today.

I'm a software developer by profession and I spend a lot of time on my computer developing websites and writing code.

Over the past few years I started getting more computer screens; having two monitors vs. one allows, a big difference in productivity... I went a bit overboard though :) Over the years I ended up getting 5 LCD monitors.... see the picture below. it really got out of control!  It took a bit of time but I realized that anything more then two screens is actually destructing and less productive.

Also at home I had my main computer that I used for work, I had an entertainment PC that was hooked up to my TV for watching movies, and of course I had a laptop. I know... I know... a bit overboard. Anyway, about 10 months ago now I tried Vista and I hated it.  I got tired of sub par computers and software so I decided to make the biggest life changing decision in my life, I bought my first Mac.

I first bought a Mac mini, it was small... quiet and yes, sexy. I fell in love with it, so I started liquidating all my old computers. I sold all my monitors but one and I sold all my old computers. Then I purchased a Macbook Pro, so I was now using my Mac Mini for the entertainment computer and Macbook Pro for development.


Now you're asking how is this in anyway related to the environment... don't worry, I'm getting to that part :)

About 6 months prior to this we just moved into our condo and our energy bill had averaged about $100 each month. Not too bad, but I talked to a few other people and they said that they paid that much for their electricity use for their entire house and our condo is only 737sq feet.

The Mac switch was easier than I thought, and I was happy. A nice surprise came the following month when we got our energy bill, it dropped by 10% even though we started using our heating. Then the following month it dropped another 32%!!!  That's huge... it's now winter and we're using our heating and our energy has dropped 42%. I believe the 1st month was only 10% because during the previous month was when the transition was taking place of selling the old equipment.   Now I can say that our total drop from last September till now is 46% which is amazing; on top of that, if you look at your bill if you use over 600 units of electricity here in Toronto they start charging you more so the dollar value you're saving is even higher then 46%!!!



I thought that it was a mistake, maybe the changing of the weather? My girlfriend was skeptical that it was the computer change, and so was I.

Switching to a Mac definitely has advantages, the Mac mini is very tiny and the energy usage is very low. Same thing goes for the Macbook Pro, it's a top of the line laptop and every new version that comes out always is more powerful and uses less power then the previous model.

If you add up the savings for the year we're looking at saving up to $550 per year. That's some serious money.

The biggest thing that I learned from this was that there are things you can do in your life that may have significant affects on the environment and your monthly bill.... just take a look at the bill below (pay attention to the history area)  to see the difference on my monthly bottom line. I always knew that saving energy was important, but I would have never realized that with this one small energy saving tip, I would save $550 a year.


Take a look at your life and see where you can make small changes and who knows you might be able to save some major dollars as well.

P.S. We have just revamped our entire green tips section of the site... so make sure you check it out daily.

UPDATE *** I've had numerous comments saying that the mac isn't the reason why I'm saving money; I'm not claiming that it's purely because of the mac but the overall change. The Mac has had some impact if you consider that mac mini, it's got a laptop based hd, smaller fans, all small components same thing goes for the tower pc, going from a tower to a laptop will always save you money that's a given.

In conclustion I didn't want to start a Mac vs PC war again I just wanted to highlight the fact that I was able to save 50% of my energy usage doing what I did above, that's all.