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Poll: Do you leave your computer on all the time?

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  1. Member waheed's Avatar
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    Mine is on all day regardless of whether its in use or not but I shut down the PC during the night.
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  2. Get a power meter & see what you are using:

    "To test the power efficiency of my products, I used a simple test. I got a device that measures electrical usage. It's called the Kill A Watt. You plug one end into the wall and plug your device into the three-pronged socket on the Kill A Watt. Press the watt button and you can see how much electricity the device is using.


    The next biggest power user in my home was the gaming computer, a fully loaded Gateway FX530 that came in at 266 watts. By comparison, the new 20-inch iMac computer from Apple scored 84 watts while idle, and 107 watts while running the iMovie video editing program.

    Laptops, of course, consumed fewer watts. The Hewlett-Packard Pavilion Entertainment laptop with the 17-inch screen used 57 watts.

    The bigger the display, the bigger the amount of electricity used. The 42-inch Panasonic Veisa plasma TV consumed 200 watts. But the FPD2485W 24-inch monitor for the Gateway computer came in at just 95 watts. And my old 27-inch Zenith standard definition TV used only 68 watts, though for some reason it used 5 watts when it was turned off. '
    http://www.montereyherald.com/lifeandtimes/ci_6836729
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  3. It used 5 watts when it was off because it was really on standby.

    Any electronic device that uses a remote is never totally off. If it was really off then the circuitry that watches for the remote signal would never sense you pressing the power button on the remote.

    Therefor we can say that any electronics in the home that has a remote is really only on standby unless theAC is disconnected this includes computers that are off as they feed a low voltage through the motherboard to the connector for the power switch on the front of the case.

    Included also any device with a LCD display such as Microwaves.

    This not really being off is the reason computer power supplies and computers get damaged by power surges.
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  4. Banned
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    Originally Posted by TBoneit
    It used 5 watts when it was off because it was really on standby.

    Any electronic device that uses a remote is never totally off. If it was really off then the circuitry that watches for the remote signal would never sense you pressing the power button on the remote.

    Therefor we can say that any electronics in the home that has a remote is really only on standby unless theAC is disconnected this includes computers that are off as they feed a low voltage through the motherboard to the connector for the power switch on the front of the case.

    Included also any device with a LCD display such as Microwaves.

    This not really being off is the reason computer power supplies and computers get damaged by power surges.

    I dont really care is device in standby gobbling up 0.5W or 50W of electricity.
    The powers-that-be need to build more nuclear power plants and provide more cheap (and clean) electricity, not jack-up prices for some stupid 'green' reasons and such. Yeah, shut down coal power plants of course, all of them right now, but *do* build nuke plants for cryin out loud! Its not that hard to build safe and reliable nuclear power plants (there are few well-tested designs in the world for years).
    IMHO electricity, same as water (and soon air I bet) must be government-controlled everywhere, including US of A. Thats a neccessity everyone needs to live in any civilized country, not a luxury. We need air, water, food and electricity to live, ditto. Whats next the green freaks are going to demand - shall we commit voluntary suicide at age of 40 or 50 too, so we we won't use as much precious earth's resources during our lifetimes as we would if we live to age of 90? Gimme a break.

    To reduce standby power usage by devices with remote controllers, there is a simple solution: i.e. 'timer' that shut downs the device completely for 5seconds, then brings it back to standby for 1 second and repeats the cycle. No one would mind to wait 5 seconds until his device turns on, hopefully (and it could be adjustable easily too - smaller or larger capacitors could be use for this purpose). It is very simple to design and can be easily make, and would save 5-fold the standby power usage (increasing, however, the remote's button pressing time - which would lead to apparently faster remote's battery drain), but would making such additional circuit in chinese factories would it outweight pollution created by our electrity production versus their factories pollutions (and from entire process starting from obtaining basic materials such as copper)? I honestly doubt it Im sure its better to get rid of coal-powered polluters and replace them with clean nuke power plants as many as we much electricity we need, how simpler and 'cleaner' it can be?
    There is nothing cheaper and 'cleaner' than nuclear energy sources.
    Not even solar or wind-powered can match it (imagine how many factories have to build turbines and solar cells and at what costs).
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  5. Member dcsos's Avatar
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    You'd still hav'ta wait 5 to10 minutes to play back HI-DEF javascript:emoticon('')
    Smile

    What do you do with your boxes Dere & TBoneit? (are they on or off at night? assuming you don't live in the artic circle)
    Mine are off when they're not performing tasks (renders or slide shows)
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  6. Banned
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    Originally Posted by dcsos
    You'd still hav'ta wait 5 to10 minutes to play back HI-DEF javascript:emoticon('')
    Smile
    Yeah, thats why I said 'hopefully' it wouldn't be a big deal
    There are many ways to reduce standby power usage by electronics, i.e. TVs (the biggest standby power guzzlers usually) can be built with enforced shutdown-if-on-standby between midnight and 4PM mon-Fri (thats when Joe Average is sleeping or at work) and other, but none of them is perfect.
    IMHO simply replacing 'dirty' power plants with 'clean' ones (and not worrying about power usage anymore) is just best solution.

    Originally Posted by dcsos
    YWhat do you do with your boxes Dere & TBoneit? (are they on or off at night? assuming you don't live in the artic circle)
    Mine are off when they're not performing tasks (renders or slide shows)
    my own PCs are all set to hibernate after 1hr, except for my home server (obviously) and the 'media center' PC that acts as my home network server for movies/music/files (but both dont have any monitors). I dont use and never used any screen savers, my old CRT monitors used to go to standby after 10min and shut down after 15min, LCD monitors I set to shut down after 20min except my main computer which monitor shutd sown when computer hibernates (because I use it many times when Im home, someone can message me etc etc - there is no point in shutting down and turning on LCD monitor too often since it decreases lifespan of the backlight a lot).

    IMHO Microsoft should have enforced use of hibernation instead of shutdown in every consumer Windows since W2K as default.
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  7. Originally Posted by dcsos
    You'd still hav'ta wait 5 to10 minutes to play back HI-DEF javascript:emoticon('')
    Smile

    What do you do with your boxes Dere & TBoneit? (are they on or off at night? assuming you don't live in the artic circle)
    Mine are off when they're not performing tasks (renders or slide shows)
    Mine at work goes on at 10AM and off at 7PM weekdays and off at 6PM saturdays. It is always being accessed.

    At home I turn mine on, do my work and turn it off, Hit the AC disconnect switch until I need again. Typical use might be On at 9PM off at Midnight. Once every two weeks leave it on and do a Virus and Spyware scan overnight then turn off before leaving for work. Turn on Sunday Morning, Do any Encodes, Authoring, burning, surfing etc. then off by midnight. They only take a Minute or two to boot to XP. AMD 64 X2 4200 with one Gig and two Gig memory.

    More a matter of energy costs and avoiding wear and tear than anything else.
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  8. Member dcsos's Avatar
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    I finally loaded LINUX (ubuntu) on a AMD XP 1gig system I had lying idle.
    I'm gonna see if there are any power saving features in LINUX that work.

    The problem is the screen savers are so new and creative that I may never get there!
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  9. Banned
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    Originally Posted by dcsos
    I finally loaded LINUX (ubuntu) on a AMD XP 1gig system I had lying idle.
    I'm gonna see if there are any power saving features in LINUX that work.

    The problem is the screen savers are so new and creative that I may never get there!
    Ubuntu does hibernate perfectly and AFAIR it is installed by default.
    (unless something has changed in past 2 years since I have try it)
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  10. I use Shut down Expert to schedule my hibernation and wake up schedule for my computer. I used to leave it on at all times but have found this program very useful for scheduling various computer events. You can check it out at http://www.zylsoft.com/shutdown.htm
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  11. Member Heywould3's Avatar
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    i use to leave it on all the time. i just did a calculation of power used. i over clock quite a bit so im using more power than a standard user. but im pulling over 550 watts when all drives are running. my prosessor is pulling 107 watts at 1.55v. do the math.. i think it cost more to keep my computer on 24/7 than it does to run my AC lol.
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  12. Mod Neophyte redwudz's Avatar
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    I just checked the AC power consumption of one of my video servers, 168 Watts. It uses nine SATA drives and one DVD drive in a full tower case, along with six 80mm case fans and a 450W power supply. The draw does jump up to about 350 Watts for a few seconds as the drives spin up.

    I was expecting the server to use a lot more power. But it usually only runs a few hours a day, so not really that expensive. One of my other computers with just two hard drives and two DVD burners and two fans runs about 105 Watts AC.
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  13. Member Heywould3's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by redwudz
    I just checked the AC power consumption of one of my video servers, 168 Watts. It uses nine SATA drives and one DVD drive in a full tower case, along with six 80mm case fans and a 450W power supply. The draw does jump up to about 350 Watts for a few seconds as the drives spin up.

    I was expecting the server to use a lot more power. But it usually only runs a few hours a day, so not really that expensive. One of my other computers with just two hard drives and two DVD burners and two fans runs about 105 Watts AC.
    are these startup ratings? have you tested at full load with all running? all hd spun full load cpu?

    I dont know how i could be spikeing at 500+ it runs at 200wattsish when just surfin.
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  14. Member ebenton's Avatar
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    Mine is on all of the time, because I use Wireless Sync with MS Outlook on my PocketPC phone and my home desktop.
    I turn off the 22" LCD monitor at night and when I'm at work.
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