Do You Turn Your Computers Off At Night?
from the questions-for-the-masses dept
With energy costs heading continuously upwards, Fujitsu is now suggesting that companies should tell their employees to turn PCs off at night to save energy. �Of course, for many, many years, this has been a very popular question for computer users -- as can be seen by the number of results on a simple Google search. �There are, clearly, pros and cons to leaving the computer on and turning it off -- so with that in mind, we've set up our own extremely unscientific survey. �Some people insist that constantly restarting your computer is actually worse for it than just leaving it on. �Others claim the energy savings are a much bigger deal, and that argument may gain support with energy costs getting higher every day.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
No Subject Given
I myself run a script at night on all of our computers to update our database.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: No Subject Given
You should/could consider standardizing on WOL.
[http://www.intel.com/support/network/sb/cs-000084.htm]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
I run a small web server off my home pc, and even though I turn disks off after an hour, it still works when it is accessed so... I think it is just a stupid thing to ask people to do.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Turning off your computer - one more option.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Turning off your computer - one more option.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Turning off your computer - one more option.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Finding the UMVUE
Would it make sense to perform a two-stage sequential sampling experiment, in which the number of turned-off PC's are recorded on different nights? Assuming a Bernoulli trial, then we could solve for the UMVUE of 1/theta.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Finding the UMVUE
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
What damage?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: What damage?
Personally i leave it on. no matter how much i get bitched at for my power consumption. In the winter i dont have to turn on my baseboard heaters, thats what my computer and 21" monitors are for :-)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: What damage?
However, I still turn mine off because who ever wired my house did a very crappy job and I doubt it was up to code when this house was built. (the circut for one room actually controls only half of the room and half of another. The one that controls "my room" only turns on and off two walls in my room, the room next door, and part of the living room)
I used to just put it into sleep mode, but i got a video card that has a fan on the heat sync and it doesn't power up when i wake it up, and my new power suply doesn't respond to the sleep command, so its pretty much pointless putting it in sleep.
Thus I have to shut it down :(
It keeps my room warm during the day but when i wake up, its cold! rawr!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: What damage?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: What damage?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: What damage?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
_____________
1.67GHz, 15" Powerbook, 512 Ram, 80G HD, 64M Video, Sudden Motion Sensor, Scrolling Trackpad
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Home/Work
the results are going to be a bit ambiguous.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Leaking?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Leaking?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
think about the millions of people who work avg. jobs at Malls, Groceries, dealerships etc. that arent on huge servers or just dont even have access to a computer during work hours and their computers at home. Millions of us have computers that we can probably just shut down at night.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
No one has mentioned or gleaned, that by telling users to power off overnight, the biggest benefit might just be that they are re-booting [Windows]. i.e. - What's the first thing you get told by IS to do when you have a problem?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
VPN Users
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Power Supplies
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Back in teh day....
In modern PC's, this is not so much an issue. Yes, leaving your computer on indefinitely will certainly extend its life, but PC's today are not as subject to breaking simply because of temperature.
I have an acquaintance who's a (retired) engineer for Seagate and Maxtor. He tells me to leave my drives running because the temperature variances can encourage condensation - the #1 killer of hard drives today.
Oh yeah, and of course, your viewpoint on this topic is myopic! lol, j/k Techdirt.
~j~
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Back in the day....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:monitor off
Got everthing backed up..someday it will go;;
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:monitor off
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Save power without turning off
By using technology used in portables in all computers, a lot of energy can be saved.
In portables there are things like clocking down the CPU when idle, turning of the graphics card and other parts that are not used. The HD can be turned off to of course.
With this technology in a computer, you will save a lot of energy also when you work with the computer and you might not have to turn it off by night since the power consumption will be low when it is not used.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I turn them off
I dunno whether leaving computers on would be good or bad for the electronics, but it would certainly reduce the life of the plants.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
wol
If you use 'ip directed-broadcast', which you will if you aren't on the local subnet, be sure to use access lists to limit what machines can send broadcasts. Specifically, only allow your management station.
Otherwise, you may be opening your network up to future problems.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
WOL
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Dirt in computer fans
Clean
[ link to this | view in chronology ]