Thankfully, there's a pretty easy way to set that up. All you need is a tiny, free command-line utility called NirCmd, and .

In a nutshell, you'll extract NirCmd to a folder on your hard drive (I used C:\Nircmd for simplicity's sake), create a shortcut to it, assign a hotkey of your choice to that shortcut, and then, if you want, pick a nice-looking icon to go with it.

Works like a charm. Now, whenever I press Ctrl-Shift-M, my monitor goes dark. A tap of any other key wakes it up again. The only challenge I face is remembering to do this every time I get up from my chair--but I trained myself to use other hotkeys, so this should be a breeze.

Think of the energy we could save if everybody used this tip!