Your computer can save energy with BigFix power management



Last revision October 5, 2010

The School of Earth Sciences is working hard to implement Dean Matson's call to make our operations more energy efficient and environmentally sustainable.

The hundreds of computers in Earth Sciences buildings are significant consumers of electricity. They can be configured to save energy when they are idle. This also saves money that can be applied to academic programs.

The BigFix patch management system was used in July to enable power management centrally on Stanford-owned computers supported under the School's contract with the ITS Computing Resource Consulting group. Personally-owned computers were not included in the July rollout of BigFix power management. Some Stanford-owned computers were also missed by mistake.

We can get maximal energy savings if everyone will check that their office and lab computers have been configured with appropriate BigFix power management settings. You are also encouraged to configure BigFix power management on your personally-owned computer that is used in your Earth Sciences office. Simply download and run the Stanford Power Management Tool:
      Get Power Management Tool for PCs running Windows XP or later
      Get Power Management Tool for Mac OS X 10.4 or later

Clicking on one of the links above should download the tool to your computer. It may open up another window or tab that prompts you to login first with your SUNet ID. Look in your normal downloads location (browser-dependent) to find and run the tool. You must have adminstrative rights on your computer to run the tool.

The normal BigFix client is needed. That is automatically installed if you register your computer on the Earth Sciences network. If you have removed BigFix, or you registered in the campus residence halls where BigFix is not required, then you can get the BigFix client from the Essential Stanford Software website:
      Get BigFix client for Windows PCs
      Get BigFix client for Mac OS X

You can also get help to install BigFix or set power management from our CRC consultants.

When you run the Stanford Power Management Tool, select one of these options:

  • Stanford Green starts by just putting the monitor to sleep when the computer is inactive. After a longer period of inactivity, it puts the entire computer to sleep so it is using only the minimum amount of power needed to maintain memory but not run any programs. This saves more energy than just monitor sleep, but may disrupt long-running programs or network connections.

  • Stanford Yellow just puts the monitor to sleep when the computer is inactive. This saves less energy than Stanford Green, but does not affect any running programs or network connections.

  • None can be selected to disable all power management by BigFix if you have tried the Stanford Green and Stanford Yellow settings and both of those interfere with your normal work.

This table shows how long the computer must be inactive before monitor or computer sleep starts under the two different BigFix power management settings. "Inactive" means that no keyboard or mouse activity is detected during the time shown. When you use the mouse or keyboard, you "reset the timer".

Setting Monitor sleeps (goes blank) Entire computer sleeps
Stanford
Green
After 10 minutes inactive
(5 minutes on battery power)
After 30 minutes inactive
(20 minutes on battery power)
Stanford
Yellow
After 15 minutes inactive
(10 minutes on battery power)
Never when on building power
(after 30 minutes inactive on battery power)
Press a key or move the mouse to wake from the sleep setting.

See this page of questions and answers about the BigFix power management program for more information about how the power management works, what the side effects can be, and why we are doing this.

Comments or Questions?