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On 2012-04-23 20:40 , Trevor wrote:
"Alan wrote in message
...
Even in *hibernate* mode where everything actually shuts down, or when
actually turned off but with mains still connected, the PC power supplies
still draw more than 1W.

I'm surprised, because hibernate on a PC should be 0 power (other than a
little PS draw for the power switch circuit and maybe
keyboard/mouse/ethernet activation).

"0 power"! Yeah right. :-)
You think ANY power supply is 100% efficient, and you think the computer can

What do you thing "other than a little PS draw means?

detect ANYTHING without drawing *some* power?
Right, it's that "little PS draw" that we are arguing about. Multiply it by
24/365 and a few billion computers, it starts to add up!

It is still trivial compared to other vampires in the house.


Just another reason to get a Mac if PC's are so poorly designed.

I don't save THAT much electricity :-) Easier to turn the PC off in any
case.

(BTW: the term clone for PC's went out of use a very long time ago).

Seems you confuse an Apple with a PC "clone" when I don't use the term!

You said QUOTE

"The iMac may use that little, but I know of no PC clone that uses that
...."

ENDQUOTE on 2012-04-22 @ 20:00 EDST (2012-04-23 @ 00:00 UTC).



It's not worth obsessing about, even in the 1,000,000 sleeping computers
case, the amount of power consumed is a scant fraction of the power loss
in televisions (in off mode), home entertainment systems, lighting left on
and the many other vampires such as wall pack power supplied forever
plugged in.

That's my point, a PC in standby uses far more power than any wall/plug
pack! And some people worry about them.

Not when properly designed and it's a fraction of all the other devices
in your home sucking power continuously and/or inefficiently.


There are many other places to look for power savings.

Exactly, and the PC is one of them.

Bottom of the list if power savings is an issue.

--
"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did.
I said I didn't know."
-Samuel Clemens.

On Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:41:48 -0400, Alan Browne
wrote:

On 2012-04-23 20:30 , Eric Stevens wrote:
On Mon, 23 Apr 2012 19:15:05 -0400, Alan Browne
wrote:

On 2012-04-23 17:06 , Eric Stevens wrote:
On Mon, 23 Apr 2012 10:11:08 -0500, David
wrote:

writes:

Is electricity free over there? I shut down my computer every night, and
turn it off at the power point, to save electricity mostly. 1 minute to boot
up in the morning is hardly a great imposition when I can be doing something
else anyway.

Modern computers go to sleep pretty thoroughly, the power difference
won't be much.

20 years ago, the wear and tear of shutting down and starting up
exceeded the wear and tear of idling for 16 hours; ...

It used to be that the toughest duty of a computer was surviving the
heat generated during the memory test on bootup.

What type of memory?

Dynamic

Shouldn't matter too much unless pretty old crap, poorly designed.

This was in the early days of e.g.
http://www.kuhmann.com/Cromemco/CrosNest.htm

Old - certainly. Crap - not for the time. Designed as well as they
then knew how.

Have you forgotten from where we have come?

Regards,

Eric Stevens

"Alan Browne" wrote in message
...
I'm surprised, because hibernate on a PC should be 0 power (other than a
little PS draw for the power switch circuit and maybe
keyboard/mouse/ethernet activation).

"0 power"! Yeah right. :-)
You think ANY power supply is 100% efficient, and you think the computer
can

What do you thing "other than a little PS draw means?

Not "0 power" then. Why say it? A "little" power draw simply depends on the
computer and monitor in use, and actual standby mode used.
Your money, your choice.

Trevor.

On 2012-04-24 19:55 , Eric Stevens wrote:
On Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:41:48 -0400, Alan Browne
wrote:

On 2012-04-23 20:30 , Eric Stevens wrote:
On Mon, 23 Apr 2012 19:15:05 -0400, Alan Browne
wrote:

On 2012-04-23 17:06 , Eric Stevens wrote:
On Mon, 23 Apr 2012 10:11:08 -0500, David
wrote:

writes:

Is electricity free over there? I shut down my computer every night, and
turn it off at the power point, to save electricity mostly. 1 minute to boot
up in the morning is hardly a great imposition when I can be doing something
else anyway.

Modern computers go to sleep pretty thoroughly, the power difference
won't be much.

20 years ago, the wear and tear of shutting down and starting up
exceeded the wear and tear of idling for 16 hours; ...

It used to be that the toughest duty of a computer was surviving the
heat generated during the memory test on bootup.

What type of memory?

Dynamic

Shouldn't matter too much unless pretty old crap, poorly designed.

This was in the early days of e.g.
http://www.kuhmann.com/Cromemco/CrosNest.htm

Old - certainly. Crap - not for the time. Designed as well as they
then knew how.

Have you forgotten from where we have come?

No. I programmed some pretty wacky hardware in the 80's that was 70's
origin. I don't recall memory heating as an issue (these systems all
had startup and continuous memory testing).


--
"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did.
I said I didn't know."
-Samuel Clemens.

On 2012-04-24 20:39 , Trevor wrote:
"Alan wrote in message
...
I'm surprised, because hibernate on a PC should be 0 power (other than a
little PS draw for the power switch circuit and maybe
keyboard/mouse/ethernet activation).

"0 power"! Yeah right. :-)
You think ANY power supply is 100% efficient, and you think the computer
can

What do you thing "other than a little PS draw means?

Not "0 power" then. Why say it? A "little" power draw simply depends on the
computer and monitor in use, and actual standby mode used.
Your money, your choice.

Indeed. Which is why I would look for other sources in the house to
save power on and not obsess over a PC that's not drawing much in sleep.


--
"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did.
I said I didn't know."
-Samuel Clemens.

On 4/24/2012 4:40 PM, Alan Browne wrote:


So you can't bother sleeping it while you sleep?

Can't see much point.. If I wake up, I'll just be turning it back on..
And I feel turning the thing on and off every day causes more wear
of components than leaving them on all the time.




The time it takes to go from low clock to high is a few clock cycles.
You would never notice the difference. Also running the CPU 'hot' will
increase the probability of failure.

Yea, but I don't want it even thinking about it.. particularly
when running the sim..
Don't care about the extra wear.. I change the hardware often
enough that what I have will likely be gone well before it decides to go
kaput.. I've never worn out a CPU yet, and I overclock them.


But if it makes any feel better, I use only curly light bulbs..
No 100w incandescent bulbs to be found around here. And my car gets
40-43 mpg on the highway.
I figure I can splurge a bit when it comes to my puter.
After all, my name is not Al Gore. :|

Tedious.

Tedious, as a statement, makes no real sense to my brain pan
as it applies to this topic.

On Tue, 24 Apr 2012 22:06:17 -0400, Alan Browne
wrote:

On 2012-04-24 19:55 , Eric Stevens wrote:
On Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:41:48 -0400, Alan Browne
wrote:

On 2012-04-23 20:30 , Eric Stevens wrote:
On Mon, 23 Apr 2012 19:15:05 -0400, Alan Browne
wrote:

On 2012-04-23 17:06 , Eric Stevens wrote:
On Mon, 23 Apr 2012 10:11:08 -0500, David
wrote:

writes:

Is electricity free over there? I shut down my computer every night, and
turn it off at the power point, to save electricity mostly. 1 minute to boot
up in the morning is hardly a great imposition when I can be doing something
else anyway.

Modern computers go to sleep pretty thoroughly, the power difference
won't be much.

20 years ago, the wear and tear of shutting down and starting up
exceeded the wear and tear of idling for 16 hours; ...

It used to be that the toughest duty of a computer was surviving the
heat generated during the memory test on bootup.

What type of memory?

Dynamic

Shouldn't matter too much unless pretty old crap, poorly designed.

This was in the early days of e.g.
http://www.kuhmann.com/Cromemco/CrosNest.htm

Old - certainly. Crap - not for the time. Designed as well as they
then knew how.

Have you forgotten from where we have come?

No. I programmed some pretty wacky hardware in the 80's that was 70's
origin. I don't recall memory heating as an issue (these systems all
had startup and continuous memory testing).

The point is that all solid state devices have switching losses.
Switching losses generate heat. The memory and associated support
chips of the late 70s were relatively massive and the heat generated
by the switching loss was not trivial. When you ran a memory test on
startup every cell was exercised and support and mapping chips
switched every memory cycle. The heat generated by this activity was
said to be considerably more than in normal operation.

More to the point, there were components which ran up more cycles
during a memory test than in normal operation. Chip failures were, in
effect, mechanical at the microscopic level and were brought on by
thermal cycling at the junctions. To the best of my recollection the
risk of failures on startup were due to the number of thermal cycles
rather than the total quantity of heat. My memory is hazy as this was
all about 35 years ago.

Regards,

Eric Stevens

"NM5K" wrote in message
...
And I feel turning the thing on and off every day causes more wear
of components than leaving them on all the time.

Yep lots of people do, with absolutely no supporting evidence required.


Don't care about the extra wear

???, You just said less.


.. I change the hardware often
enough that what I have will likely be gone well before it decides to go
kaput.

Yep, I already said that.


I've never worn out a CPU yet, and I overclock them.

Right, so it's irrelevant to the argument of power use.

Trevor.

On 4/25/2012 3:33 AM, Trevor wrote:
wrote in message
...
And I feel turning the thing on and off every day causes more wear
of components than leaving them on all the time.

Yep lots of people do, with absolutely no supporting evidence required.


I have hundreds of hours of supporting evidence with all types
of electronic equipment. In general, turning off a piece of gear,
letting it cool off, and then turning it back on, causes more
wear and stress than just leaving it on during that period.
You not only have the thermal cycling issues, but you also
have slight amounts of component wear due to inrush current, etc.
Whether or not this would really matter would depend on how often
a day you cycle it, and for how long a period it's usually off,
before being turned back on. In my case, if I did turn it off once a
day, it wouldn't stay off very long, and I'd end up turning right back
on. So it's not worth it.
If it were to stay off a long time, then it might be worth considering.

The worst case would be someone that uses a puter for 15 minutes
a shot, 10 times a day, and turns it on and off every time.
That's stressful with all those cycles and start ups..

I'm the same way with radios.. When I ran older tube type ham gear,
I left it on 24/7.. It was less stressful on the gear, and more stable,
due to a constant temp.. I didn't have to let it warm up and get
stable after turning it on. It was ready when I sat down.
Of course, my newer S/S radios are stable enough for temp not
to be much of an issue as far as stability.



Don't care about the extra wear

???, You just said less.

He's talking about the CPU and my not using the main board
throttling scheme. The above is about the whole box as a system,
power supply, hard drives, etc..
My mother board can throttle the CPU and has a set of four blue
lights on the board that show what state it's in.
Being a puter heathen, I like to see all four blue lights winking
and blinking at all times. If I used that scheme, all it would
cause me to do is have to reboot every time I run my sim, in order
to turn it off to make sure it doesn't get slack on me.
And then I'd have to reboot again if I wanted to turn it back on.
It's not worth the aggravation. :/



.. I change the hardware often
enough that what I have will likely be gone well before it decides to go
kaput.

Yep, I already said that.

So.. I never read it... :/


I've never worn out a CPU yet, and I overclock them.

Right, so it's irrelevant to the argument of power use.

And? I don't get the point.. Actually, I could care less if it is, or
it isn't.. That's how I want to run my box, and that's the end of it,
unless someone else wants to start paying my light bill. :|

Trevor wrote:
"Eric Stevens" wrote in message

Only a few have
required that I do it in the course of the day but I have long got
into the habit of shutting my machine down at night to get a clean
start in the morning.

Is electricity free over there? I shut down my computer every night, and
turn it off at the power point, to save electricity mostly. 1 minute to boot
up in the morning is hardly a great imposition when I can be doing something
else anyway.

How long does it take to get back to the same state in all
programs? How much manual intervention does that need?

I can walk away from my computer at any time and return at any
time and continue working, no matter what time it is. That's worth
lots to me.

We're not even talking about automatic backup and other automated
processes (indexing, for example), which are mostly set to run
at night so they don't interfere with the day's work.


Of course, if electricity is so dear to you, you might try use
the computer less (less newsgroups, less photos, less websurfing)
and go to bed around sunset (saving electric lights).

-Wolfgang