• When choosing a computer, you need to understand for what purposes it is needed and how much space is allocated for it in the office.
• Of course, if you are creating an open-plan office, you should choose a portable computer (laptop).
• When buying equipment for the workplace, you should consider that a laptop usually uses less energy than a desktop computer. Compared to a stationary computer, equivalent portable computers designed to work with standard software such as Microsoft Office use up to five times less energy!
• When using a computer on a daily basis, we recommend adjusting its screen brightness to the ambient light level. If the room is well lit, the screen brightness should be increased. On the other hand, if the lighting in the room is dimmed, it is recommended to reduce the brightness of the screen. The brighter the computer screen, the more electricity it uses.
• If you use a stationary computer with a separate monitor, when you finish working with the computer, completely turn off not only the computer, but also the monitor, so as not to waste electricity unnecessarily in standby mode.
• If employees are going to a meeting, we recommend putting computers into hibernation mode. Computers’ hibernate feature allows users to save their current work as it is and resume right where they left off when they return. Employees can set their computers to hibernate when they are inactive for several minutes.
• We also recommend that you check if your computer can be set to automatically turn off the screen or go to sleep after a certain period of time when you have not used it. This will be useful in cases when the employee is suddenly distracted from working with the computer, but does not manage to turn it off or put it to sleep.
• A computer in sleep mode uses twice as much energy as a computer that is turned off. Sleep mode is a power-saving mode when most of the computer's subsystems are turned off. However, this mode requires a small amount of memory to store memory and sometimes requires more power to perform scheduled tasks.
• If you plan not to use the computer for a longer period of time, for example two hours, we recommend shutting it down instead of putting it to sleep, because it still consumes electricity in sleep mode.
• To reduce the electricity consumption of computer equipment in standby mode, we also recommend using extension cords with a switch where you connect your computer, monitor, printer and other devices. When you are finished, turn off the extension cord switch to avoid power consumption in standby mode.

The size of the monitor affects the amount of electricity consumed. Although graphic designers and similar professions cannot work on small screens, there are certainly many employees in your company whose work does not depend on giant monitors.

When choosing your monitor size, choose wisely, keeping in mind that smaller monitors use less energy.

When buying a computer monitor, you should pay attention to the indicated power so as not to waste electricity unnecessarily.

Remember! The brighter the screen, the more electricity it uses. Try to adjust the brightness of the screen to the level of ambient light: in a well-lit room, the screen brightness should be increased, and in a dark room, it should be decreased.

Which printer to choose and how do they differ?

• First of all, you need to find out what kind of work you need a printer for. For example, do you plan to use it to print documents or photos? Does the device have to have a scanner and copier? Are you going to print posters or other large format documents?
• A black and white laser printer will easily provide fast and high-quality printing of black and white documents for a large office. Such a printer uses toner (powder placed in a cartridge) for work, the resource of which is sufficient for printing a large number of documents (including on thin paper). However, such a printer is not suitable for printing colour images. For office work, it is possible to choose a multifunctional laser printer, which is also suitable for printing colour images.
• If you plan to print photos or colour images in good quality and in bulk, you should choose an inkjet printer. Such a printer uses liquid ink cartridges at work, and it will easily cope with printing black and white documents at home or in a small office.
• If you need a universal device that will copy, print and scan documents, pay attention to multifunction devices – devices that combine a printer, scanner and copier. Like printers, these machines tend to be laser or inkjet.
• For printing a large volume of black-and-white documents, it is better to choose a universal laser device, while for printing colour images or black-and-white documents in a small office, a universal ink device will be suitable. The scanner in such devices is of the tablet type, which means that it reads text and images from horizontal plates (pages, books). In addition, the multifunction device provides quality copies of black and white and colour documents at a speed of 50–125 pages per minute.
• Speed and print quality are very important indicators when choosing a multifunction device or printer. The print resolution (clarity and detail), indicated in dpi units of image resolution, and its format are responsible for the quality of the work. A resolution starting from 2400 x 1200 dpi will ensure high print quality for colour documents. Keep in mind that the higher the print quality, the lower the speed, so when choosing a printer, decide what you need more: printing quality colour images or printing large volumes of documents quickly.

Recommendations for economical use of the printer:

• print pages on both sides (manufacturing and distributing paper uses much more energy than printing in your office);
• if possible, turn off the printer completely after finishing work, because the printer continues to consume a small amount of electricity in standby mode (for example, a small laser printer consumes an average of 85 kWh per year in standby mode, while large stationary printers consume an average of 122 kWh per year in standby mode);
• avoid printing files that can be sent by email. These days, important files can be shared or stored in a variety of ways.