Power Consumption?

[Particle]

So it depends on what you're after.

Absolute maximum energy savings?  Make sure you hibernate your computer every time you go to bed.  You can schedule it to happen automatically, but that can be a pain in the butt.  You might also set it to suspend when not in use for 30 minutes.  That mode saves a lot of power and takes little time to exit.  Applications cannot run when suspended, however.  Don't forget to unplug your TV.  I personally don't see how it's worth the $5-10/mo, but whatever.

Good balance?  Make sure your computer's power saving features are enabled.  Make your monitor enter power saving mode after 30 minutes and have your computer auto-suspend when it hasn't been used for an hour.

American spirit?  Disable all power saving features such as PowerNOW! and hibernate or suspend options.  You can leave on the monitor shutoff if you have an LCD, since it's good practice to leave them off for a couple hours a day.  Also, load up with Folding @ Home, SETI @ Home, or Distributed.NET to eat up CPU cycles you aren't using.  The first actually helps medical science.  The third might win you some prize money.  The second is useless but eats up CPU time anyway (and watts!).  Woohoo!  Now that's the American dream! *American flags and oil barrels rain from the sky*

Remember that starting up a computer is rough on the hard drives.  Setting suspend or hibernate to like 5 minutes is NOT a good idea.  Never set your hard drives to go idle during no activity, either.  Laptops are better suited to power saving features regarding hard drives than desktops are.  Solidstate electronics do just fine, so CPU power saving is OK if you want to utilize those features.

Personally, I prefer "American Spirit" over the other two.

[KoRo]

But I like SETI@Home

[Lidge Farkley]

Unless you want to save $5-$10 a month on electricity leaving it on won't hurt.

Holy crap I am returned for this conversation!

It's been a while since I have looked at prices of electricity or done cost comparrison, but let's go off of what you posted here for you claim of one computer being $5 a month, and let's say 5, because it is cheapest of what you said.

So.. one computer, for 12 months is $60 a year.  In my case, a few gallons below a full tank of gas (when I am lucky and prices are lower) or 8 music CD's from Amazon at $12 each, shipped.

Ok.. so let's say you live in a house with 3 other people and everyone leaves their computer on constantly.  $20 a month for 4 computers at $5 pull per month.  $240 a year.  Is half of a month's rent worth it?


As far as waiting for computers to boot... I am confused as to how it could take more than 15-30 seconds.  My computer has a bunch of extra SATA BIOS and extra diagnostics it runs at boot, but it has never taken more than 30 seconds to get to the login screen, ever, usualy only 15-20 seconds.  Is that worth $60 a year?

If the boot is worth that much money to you, you might as well buy a photovoltaic solar panel system for your house roof, right?
;-)

Just some things to think about.

Koro, I fully support your choice to conserve power and thus money and thus all of us saving money by keeping rates a little lower based on demand.

Uhhh.... peace!

[Xenos]

Ok.. so let's say you live in a house with 3 other people and everyone leaves their computer on constantly.  $20 a month for 4 computers at $5 pull per month.  $240 a year.  Is half of a month's rent worth it?

I guess depending on where you live $240 might be alot.  Around here you won't find $480 a month rent without it being in a bad part of town.  I always turn mine off when I'm not using it but if I wanted to leave in on that $60 a YEAR is small change.

[Darwin]

That was a nice perspective Lidge.

Maybe he means half a months rent when sharing rent with a roommate.

[Particle]

Heh.  It takes my computer 20-30 seconds to even get to the OS selection screen.

[slorge_gridlock]

I leave mine up, but I share drives (I have a 8-9 system LAN) so no matter what I can access each of them at anytime. that's what....$40-$45 a month so I can access "Napolean Dynamite" whenever I want?  I can hang.

I have lot's of media...I need to consolodate into one system and have a media server but I won't buy anything.  Guess I should buy large (2 TB enough?) network storage unit.  Sounds like it would pay for itself in 5-6 months.

[slorge_gridlock]

Sounds like it would pay for itself in 5-6 months.

Screw that...just looked up NAS devices and the smallest I saw was like $1100 bucks for a terabyte.

[Lidge Farkley]

I found a neato link:
http://http://www.t1shopper.com/tools/calculate/

[IceCube]

i like using power for usless stuff so in the end we all have to pay a little more. and i drive a truck that uses more gas then most of your guys tree hugging cars so when i use more gas at the pump it makes u little guys suffer in the end too because there will be less gas at the pump for u
hAHA

[Particle]

I don't see the problem.  The more gas you use and the higher it costs, the less money you have to spend on annoying others.

Maybe if gas hits $8/gallon you'll drop off the face of the Internet?

[Darwin]

IF gas gets to $8 then I'm ripping out the VVTI and converting the camry into an EV.

[Lidge Farkley]

I'm happy with my new bicycle... yay!