Whether you’re concerned about your carbon footprint or looking to save money by reducing your energy consumption, Nightwatchman, from UK developer 1E, will be of interest.

That’s because it allows you to shut down desktop PCs remotely with a centrally managed schedule, saving data from open applications in the process.

Now in its fifth generation, Nightwatchman needs to be installed onto every PC desktop on your network to be effective. It can be used with Windows 2000, XP and both 32-bit and 64-bit implementations of Windows Vista, the only other prerequisite being support for APM/ACPI power management.

Installation takes just a few seconds - either interactively or automated - using a variety of tools such as Windows group policy or Microsoft System Center Configuration Server (previously SMS).

Once installed, the software itself is something of an anti-climax with no fancy graphical interface or central management console. Instead, there’s a very lightweight client designed to respond to commands which can be either issued directly (locally on the PC or remotely) or scripted. Scripts can be distributed and applied using almost any third-party network management tool, added to which you’re supplied with a group policy template to enable many of the basic Nightwatchman settings to be configured centrally via Active Directory.

The lack of a fancy management interface isn’t that much of a loss as, in reality, it wouldn’t add much in the way of value to this tool, which is solely about automating PC shutdowns. Anyway, the command line interface is quick and easy to master, with lots of helpful documentation provided as standard. It also fits in well no matter what management tools you have to hand.

We tested it by issuing commands locally and over the network to shut down a number of network PCs. We also experimented with scripting and found it very easy to power down, reboot and put PCs into a suspend or hibernation state when we wanted. Active users can be logged off with a warning to tell them of the impending shutdown, with a countdown timer another option, plus the ability to defer the operation if you want. Similarly, a shutdown can be deferred if applications fail to close properly or are forced to continue regardless.

A number of scripts are provided to close common applications gracefully before a shutdown occurs with any open documents backed up along the way. A local system tray applet can also be enabled to allow users to view the list of files backed up during the last log-off process which will be a help if problems with document versions arise.

Basic logging is also built into the Nightwatchman software, but for more detailed reporting you need the 1E Agility Framework, a separate tool designed to provide a complete picture of energy consumption levels on the Lan. Plus there’s another companion product available - SMS Wakeup - designed to work with System Center Configuration Manager and SMS, which enables network managers to turn PCs on remotely to, for example, more effectively implement patching and other software update strategies.

Although Nightwatchman doesn’t really do very much, it works well and what it does do is extremely valuable with huge savings to be achieved in terms of energy consumption and associated costs when employed on any small-business Lan.