TUAW Tip: Turn off your Cinema Display without putting your Mac to sleep

Green computing is all the rage these days, and one of my co-workers champions environmentally sound practices here at the office. One day as we were leaving for lunch he noticed that I just locked my iMac's screen, which in turn locked the 23 inch Cinema Display attached to it. They were both happily displaying the screensaver (yes, I am aware that I am a geek). He suggested I turn off the secondary monitor if I was going to be away from my desk for awhile. I agreed with his suggestion in theory, but pointed out to him that the power button on Apple's Cinema Displays aren't actually power buttons at all. When you press them they put your machine to sleep, and since my Mac was doing some work I didn't want to do that.

Poking around the Display options shortly there after (System Preference > Displays) I noticed an 'Options' tab on the preferences for my secondary monitor. Lo and behold, the answer to my quandary was found. The power button on Cinema Display is set to put your Mac to sleep when pressed by default, but as you can see it can also be set to simply power off the monitor or do nothing at all.

I now turn off my monitor whenever I am not at my desk, and the world is a little bit greener for it.