To Power Down or Not To Power Down
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Being that I graduated with a degree in Environmental Science, you would think that I would recycle and reduce my carbon footprint a little more than I do. I ran across an interesting article this morning on the Yahoo! Green Blog (one of my favorite blogs) that was explaining why you should power down your computer and other electronic devices if you are not using them. Apparently the watts that these devices can pull while you are away from your home or office can certainly add up over time, increasing your electric bill and your carbon footprint. The writer of the article contacted Seagate, and found out to my surprise that powering down your hard drive is no longer an issue. I was always told to leave my computer on because the repeated start up and shut down is hard on the hard drive (no pun intended). Well, I guess this, among many other things, can be attributed to advances in technology… who knew? I’m not saying that I accept everything that is written, as I was told to always read between the lines, but this article did have some interesting data.
Read Article Here: Link to Yahoo!’s Green Blog
I suppose I might start shutting down the computer at night, but I will certainly be backing up my hard drive - ya know, just in case Seagate was wrong. I guess in the morning instead of zipping into the my home office and turning on my monitor to find myself where I left off, I will find that I need to start my computer - uggghh. Where’s my coffee? The point of this post is not to tell the public all the money one can save by being frugal with your electricity but rather how one might take the time to assess their carbon footprint. Think of the difference in power savings and reduced stress on the environment if the AVERAGE PC USER shut down their computers overnight at least 2-3 days out of the week.
That’s All I Got,
Four_Ones
[tags]save energy, reducing carbon footprint, powering down electronics, energy hog, saving electricity, reducing use, shutting down your pc[/tags]
7 Comments
Mike
November 5th, 2007
at 10:08am
I leave my PC on but turn off my flat panel screen. I don’t think electronics use that much energy and I’d rather be able to keep my PC updated with patches and AV definitions rather than save a few fractions of a cent and have to deal with shutting down and powering on each day.
I can’t believe that going from cold to hot conditions would not take its toll over time on a PC rather than leaving the PC on at a stable temperature. Think of cars that have engine heater options…it keeps the fluids warm so the engine startup in cold conditions doesn’t wear out the engine prematurely. No difference in a PC.
Just my .02cents
unclejohncentral
November 5th, 2007
at 10:42am
Studies have shown that long as you stick to a schedule with your power up, and power downs, that it does not really matter which you do.
It is the constant teeter totter of the unsure computer operator that tends to cause problems. Like anything, your computer gets use to the actions you put it through.
IE:
I have 8 that are started up every morning promptly at 6AM, and shut down promptly at 7PM. They do not have any problems.
Then I have two that run non stop, every day. They also have no problems.
The only thing different is the eight other machines tend to run cooler, naturally. Also they tend to not need as much cleaning, since there not constantly vacuuming the air of dust.
The worst thing you can do is shut a computer down every five minutes when you step away, thats what really will tax out a system.
Frosty Mississippi Mornings « Out Here Hope Remains
November 9th, 2007
at 6:18am
[...] Getting Savvy About Standby Power. (HT: The Daily Samurai) [...]
Richard Dungan
November 21st, 2007
at 5:59pm
Hi! I read that you have cp’s powering down at 7 pm and back own at 6 am. Can you tell me how to schedule a task like that? I only have one pc but don’t have a clue on how to do that. I would like to use standby also I am running xp home sp2. Thanks.
hman53
January 5th, 2008
at 6:33am
I normally just shut mine down at night when going to bed.Through out the day i let it go to sleep.My monitor goes to sleep and i notice my internet locks until i wake it up.Now some may not approve.But i run Vista on this machine and only use the firewall that comes with Vista and my router firewall.Which is great.Some would say i need a software firewall as well.But i find i dont.Go to Grc.com and check ports.Oh use Sheildsup there.But back to the point,i see no need to shut down during day,unless i’am leaving home.Then i don’t like leaving on,in case a storm comes us and maybe zap it.
Jack
March 30th, 2008
at 8:30pm
My Micron Millennia Max was purchased in January, ‘99. Since then it’s been turned off every night at bedtime and powered up in the morning when my wife or I decide to start using it. Naturally the CRT enters sleep mode when it hasn’t been used for awhile.
I was also warned against this practice way back when — advised that it would be hard on the power supply.
Coulda fooled me. The machine may be slow by today’s standards (my laptop can run rings around it), but still works like a champ and hasn’t needed anything integral to the CPU in nine years except a couple of cooling fans.
Because the CRT is starting to get weak, and all the modern peripherals are slowing the poor thing down, I did just buy a new Dell. Count on me turning it off at night as well.
Mike Walker
April 3rd, 2008
at 1:59pm
My desktop goes into hybrid-sleep automatically when idling for over 45mins. This does not have any effect on the pc unless you are running a virtual machine (VMWare, the open source alternative VirtualBox or another similar emulator) I have done this before and it worked, but the guest OS is not informed about standby usually, so it will might lock the guest OS up. But I usually exit virtual box saving the machine state before leaving the pc alone so it isn’t a problem. Also if you want your pc to restore itself (turn itself on or wake from standby) at a certain time then you can set it in the BIOS on the power management page. In addition, if you want you can set up the pc to shut down, hibernate, or sleep/standby at a predetermined time: say 1am. The BIOS wake up feature can be spooky, for it can start the pc by itself and then it can be set to open a web page, just like in the anime Jigoku Shojo. “Laughs to himself”