This article was written on April 29, 2008 by CyberNet.
Time Saving Tuesday
This article might seem familiar to some of you because we’ve covered shutdown utilities quite a bit in the past, but rest easy knowing that this is going to be different than anything you may or may not have read. We’re going to cover some of the best shutdown programs and tips out there since, as Ashley has pointed out, this coming Saturday is Shutdown Day.
By shutting down your computer you can save a lot of energy, which is merely money in the bank for you! If you’re one of those who leave your computer on 24-hours a day then think about the money you could save by shutting down your computer overnight. It’s estimated that 25% of people leave their computers on at the end of the day (whether it be at work or home), and so a simple shutdown would be very much welcomed. Heck, we’ve already seen how much money Vista saves because of its various power schemes.
Alright, let’s jump into the different ways to shutdown your Windows computer…
–Shutdown After BitTorrent Downloads Finish–
I’m sure many of you have left your computer running overnight to download something from the BitTorrent network. That’s definitely understandable considering how long it can take somethings, such as Linux DVD’s, to finish downloading especially when you don’t have a fast Internet connection.
One of the most popular BitTorrent clients, uTorrent, has a feature buried within the Options menu that you may not have seen before called Auto Shutdown. Check it out… you can have uTorrent shutdown your computer when the downloads complete:
–Schedule and Shutdown From Anywhere–
I have a server that I like to shutdown at night before I head off to bed, but one of the problems is that it’s not connected to a monitor or anything. So what I end up doing is remotely shutdown the computer from a web interface using Shutter, and thanks to a little port forwarding on my router it’s actually accessible from outside of my network. Don’t worry, you can specify a username and password so that some joe schmo from your local cafe isn’t rebooting your computer every 10 minutes. 😉
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To setup web access beyond the computer you’re on you’ll need to pull up the options, and there is a tab called Web Interface that you’ll need to jump to. You’ll want to change the Listen IP from the 127.0.0.1 to the IP address of the computer, and it’s probably easiest if you leave the port set to 80.
Tip: There’s also a Screenshot option that you can select on the web interface which is really nice. It will show you a screenshot of your desktop at that moment, which is handy when you don’t have a monitor hooked up!
–Shutdown After Firefox Downloads Finish–
Maybe it’s not a BitTorrent file that you’re downloading? No problem. If you’re using Firefox you can have it shutdown your computer after all downloads in the browser finish. All you’ll need is the Auto ShutDown extension.
Once installed the extension will place a “Shutdown” checkbox in the download window, which essentially gives the browser permission to shutdown the computer once the downloads complete.
If you really get into using this you may want to checkout the options it has to offer. You can change around how it works quite a bit, but the default settings will be fine for most people.
–Bulk Shutdown Computers–
Have too many computers that you need to shutdown? PowerOff Beta has an option available where you can specify multiple computers that you would like to shutdown according to IP address, name, or by browsing for them. Naturally you’ll need to know any usernames and passwords for the computers you want to shutdown… otherwise we would all be having too much fun randomly shutting down people’s computers. 😉
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–Shutdown Shortcut–
Looking for a blazingly fast way to shutdown your computer? What’s faster than creating a shortcut that you merely have to double-click? There are a lot of different options available when shutting down your computer via a shortcut, and so I’m just going to point you in the direction of our fairly comprehensive article on creating the shutdown shortcuts.
–Overview–
So I think you’re all set for Shutdown Day on Saturday, May 3rd! Shutdown your computer, get some fresh air, and then come Sunday you can stop hyperventilating from the severe withdrawals you went through.
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