If you need help with a feature other than Energy Star, click on the Help icon.
About Energy Star
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has designed the voluntary Energy Star program to promote the manufacturing and marketing of energy-efficient office automation equipment. Energy Star compliant controlling devices—of which CDU (Connectix Desktop Utilities) is one—can help reduce the energy consumption of any non-Energy Star computer products on which they are installed.
EPA estimates that Energy Star compliant computers and controlling devices will save the equivalent of enough electricity to power Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine each year, and save ratepayers up to $2 billion in annual electricity bills. Moreover, these savings will reduce the emission of carbon dioxide by 20 million tons annually, and significantly lower emissions of two pollutants responsible for acid rain, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide.
On April 21st, 1993, President Bill Clinton issued Executive Order 12845, which requires that all Federal agency acquisitions of microcomputers, monitors, and printers must meet EPA's Energy Star requirements for energy efficiency.
The Energy Star program has other potential benefits, as well:
• reduces federal government energy costs, which saves taxpayers money
• decreases air pollution caused by utility generation
• eases the burden on building air conditioning and electrical systems
• reduces machine fan noise and heat emitted by machines not being used
What's a Controlling Device?
A "controlling device" is something that is easily installed by the end user, and which is designed to reduce energy consumption of an existing personal computer, monitor, or printer by turning them off when not in use. CDU (Connectix Desktop Utilities) is a personal computer controlling device, and your installation of this product makes it possible to reduce the energy consumption of your existing Macintosh system.
The Energy Star emblem does not represent EPA endorsement of any product or service. Connectix joined EPA's Energy Star program voluntarily and has entered into a memorandum of understanding with the EPA that clearly outlines Connectix' responsibilities in producing a compliant product.
Changing Settings
CDU comes with Energy Star mode enabled. This means that your machine will automatically shut down after 60 minutes of inactivity, except during business hours (8 am to 6 pm), during which time the monitor is dimmed when your machine is idle.
To change the default Energy Star settings, click on the Energy Star icon in the icon window on the left. Then make sure the On/Off switch in the upper right corner is in the correct position (On means Energy Star features are enabled, Off means they are disabled). Adjust the "Auto-Shutdown Delay" to a value that represents the amount of inactivity time that must pass before the machine is turned off. If desired, check the "Don't Auto-Shutdown between" box and set any hours during which you want the Macintosh to NEVER be turned off.
What Happens at Shutdown?
Compliant with the EPA's Energy Star controlling device requirements, CDU "bookmarks" your system when it shuts down due to inactivity. Bookmarking means that whatever applications and documents were open when the machine went inactive will be restored when it is restarted. In other words, when you turn your Macintosh back on, the applications and documents you had open will be reopened automatically for you.
CDU (in conjunction with the Macintosh operating system) does the following when inactivity causes it to shutdown the computer:
• all open documents will be saved (previously unsaved documents are put in a "Work in Progress" folder marked with the day's date)
• any dialogs or alerts that appear will be dismissed
• any removable media is ejected
• any warning condition is taken care of before shutdown (e.g., if the machine is spooling a long document to the printer, this is completed first)
CDU’s default is to preserve and restore all active user data, even if it is unsaved. During an automatic shutdown, CDU performs a save on all documents that have unsaved changes.
This may not be what you want CDU to do. You have two other options: (1) deselect the auto-save option so that no changes are saved—this means any document that wasn’t saved prior to the automatic shutdown will not have its changes preserved—you could lose work this way; or (2) close any documents that you don’t want saved before leaving the computer at the end of the day. In general, it is a good idea to save often and not leave unsaved documents hanging around when you walk away from your machine. Power failures and unsuspecting coworkers could easily lose information in such cases.
