Forget about productivity -- a recent study by the NPD Group found that
the majority of the time that home PC is running, it's doing... nothing!
The study monitored 10,076 computer-owning households and used its PC
Meter software to tally the time the computers sat idle following an
initial 60 seconds of no activity on the keyboard or mouse.
Fifty-four percent of the time the machines were switched on, they were
not being used, and when they were used, the biggest chunk of time (29%)
was devoted to "futzing" -- fiddling around with operating systems,
organizing files, changing "wallpaper" and screensaver patterns, and
altering the speed of the cursor blink. Meanwhile, word processing and
business software use took up 16% of the time, and Internet surfing
accounted for only 12%. The Sierra Club points out that turning a computer
on and leaving it on unused for three hours a day results in about 200
pounds of carbon dioxide pollution every year. (Wall Street Journal 28 Feb
97)
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