Our server has been getting hit with quite a lot of spam attempts, (95% of messages recieved by our server are rejected as spam), as well as regular illegal entry attempts. It seems like pages of logs reporting failed login attempts.
Anyone who uses email on any server can help reduce the load on servers everywhere by making a few changes in their email program. I assure you there is really no need to check your email EVERY minute of the day. If you leave your computer on you are just wasting power. Check your email when you get into the office and give your server a break.We see minute by minute logins at all times of the day. Turn off your computer or set it to standby/hibernate when you leave the office and save a bit of energy. Every little bit helps. Make a change to your email program and select no more than 10 minutes interval for email checking. On many servers if you check more than 20-30 times per hour, aditional requests will be ignored. You will be blocked until the counter resets. There is no error message when this happens. You will be none the wiser.
I hope I can get time to write about how to setup your computer for energy efficient operation. There are quite a few hints that will help to reduce power usage. One myth that comes up often is that it is better for the computer to leave it turned on. This is not really true. Probably you should not cycle it on/off more than necessary. If you are not planning to use your computer for a couple of hours set it up to use standby. Hibernate is useful if your computer supports this. Standby uses very little power while hibernate uses none. The advantage of using hibernate is the speed it is ready to use when you restart it.
My computer is set to blank the screen in 5 minutes, turn off the hard drive after 10 minutes and standby after 120 minutes. On my laptop these settings are shorter to save battery. 1 minute to blank screen, 5 minutes to standby. I do change these settings depending on my needs. Interesting to note that a desktop PC typically uses around 80-140 watts of power. A 15″ laptop uses around 30-50 watts while my 12″ laptop uses as little as 18 watts. This is significant if you do not need the performance of a desktop computer. You can save quite a lot of power with a modest laptop.
Soon I hope to have time to expand on this.