Leaving PCs On Overnight Costs $2.8B Annually

InorganicMatter said:
I still can't believe the world hasn't discovered that this wonderful thing called "sleep mode" works as good on desktops as it does on laptops. Mac OS X has had it for ~10 years, and Windows finally fixed it in Vista. After 10 minutes of inactivity, my system goes to sleep. When I want to use it, I just sit down and tap the any key. It wakes up in 0.5 seconds, exactly like I left it. The system also automatically comes out of sleep for automatic updating. It's great!
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My rigs on XP in sleep mode are dead silent no fans are even spinning. Aside from a flashing LED the computer appears off. The sarcastic side of me wanted to say "wow you pressed a key and the comp was exactly as it was.... F$&* AMAZING!!!" but I refrained in case I'm missing something.
 
My rigs on XP in sleep mode are dead silent no fans are even spinning. Aside from a flashing LED the computer appears off. Then yeah you press a key, and amazingly, it doesn't have to boot..... it wakes up.

The sarcastic side of me wanted to say "wow F$&* AMAZING!!!," but I refrained in case I'm missing something.
 
Bigbacon said:
Sleep mode has to use some power to keep the data in the ram. I think even the hibernation mode needs some power.
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Hibernation mode does not use power. It copies the contents fo the ram to the harddrive then loads it back into ram when you turn the machine back on. Hibernation mode mode turns the machine off completely, sleep mode turns off everything that it can and as you said, uses power to keep the contents of RAM in RAM.
 
Damn it! Guess you can't edit here. Sorry, Woops! Uh, my computer is groggy from sleep.
 
I'm trying to increase my carbon footprint. I love carbon and all foot-printing done with it!





 
Glade to see propaganda is being pushed out by usatoday, again. Do people leave there PC's on? maybe. Do I? maybe. Does it take 15 minutes to load my computer in-turn making me late? yes. Am i allowed to login early? no. Does it take two minutes to load seratel? yes.
 
This thread is full of LuLz...myself with 3 Pc's in the house am considering shutting down or sleep/hibernate from now on....saving $ > anything IMO.(except you [H] Folders, I admire what you do)
 
Parja said:
What options are out there for XP? Almost all of our workstations are running on XP. IS insists we keep them running overnight and over weekends for updating and virus scans. There's gotta be a better way.
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Sleep mode works absolutely fine on my XP laptop :confused:

ryko said:
i was under the impression that turning your pc off and on every day significantly shortens the lifespan of your hardware....especially harddrives.
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That's completely false
 
According to energy-management software company, the sponsors of this report, there are 108 million office computers. How quaint, at $2.8 billion that's roughly $25 per computer annually. At $0.10 per kWh with a 40 hour work week, those machines use 30 watts while idle ($26 per week / (52 weeks per year * 128 idle hours per week * $0.10 per kwH)) I figured the idle time by guessing that in a 168 hour week, the computers are used only for 40 hours a week, as that's the average work week.

Now, according to the BLS.gov website, there are approx. 80 million professional workers, and another 10 in the government, who are all in occupations I think require daily access to a computer.

a Q4 2006 census report stated that there are roughly 225 million household computers, and they account for 3/4 of all computers used in the united states. Going by that figure, there are roughly 300 million total computers being used here in the united states meaning there are only 75 million computers to divide amongst private and public use.

If we go by the ratio of 10% public, 80% private, that means businesses use 60 million computers, which is very close to what the BLS reports as white collar employment. Since the BLS figure includes secretaries, assistants, and other office staff who may share a computer, I'd say my rough estimate is closer to the truth than the industry sponsored report manufactured to generate free press and sell unneeded software, under the guise of saving those poor polar bears from drowning.

I gotta love these yo-yo's at the old print-news regurgitate this junk. How hard would it have been to state, sure, turning off your computer saves money... But, if you use that idle time to run distributed 'cloud' apps (such as F@H) you are using electricity off peak-hour, which would have to be use on peak-hour otherwise, and helping to save the world... for real, instead of imaginary.

Shrug, I just have to much free time... maybe I'll go write a novel or something. (forget that, time to go play a game).
 
ryko said:
i was under the impression that turning your pc off and on every day significantly shortens the lifespan of your hardware....especially harddrives.

sorry but my stuff is staying on.
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Where do people hear retarded things like this?

I've always shut all of my computer down everyday. Hell, I shut mine down every time I leave the house, which sometimes can be 2-3 times a day. No problems and saved money!
 
NKDietrich said:
I've arbitrarily decided to measure my Uranium footprint instead. Not surprisingly, my Uranium footprint is 0, so, I'm doing really well.
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Doubtful. I'm sure at some point you consumed energy generated from a nuclear plant using a uranium product in the plant. :D

IT at my company actually requires that machines be left on overnight for AV and OS pushes, etc. Instead of requiring it on a day-to-day basis for the several occasions a year that machines actually need to be on at night, it's a policy. No, I'm not saying update AV/OS a couple times a year, but rather that most pushes can be done during regular business hours since virtually all the machines in my company are glorified word processors and wouldn't be interrupted by the updates.
 
superkdogg said:
Doubtful. I'm sure at some point you consumed energy generated from a nuclear plant using a uranium product in the plant. :D

IT at my company actually requires that machines be left on overnight for AV and OS pushes, etc. Instead of requiring it on a day-to-day basis for the several occasions a year that machines actually need to be on at night, it's a policy. No, I'm not saying update AV/OS a couple times a year, but rather that most pushes can be done during regular business hours since virtually all the machines in my company are glorified word processors and wouldn't be interrupted by the updates.
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That is how we do it. Our machines check every few hours for new virus definitions. Windows updates are checked every day at 4pm. I have virus scans set to run a quick scan every day at 9 am and a full scan every friday at noon. That is because it is up to people if they leave their machines on over night or just lock them / log off and let them go to sleep. 4 for windows updates gives it time to download and install them a little before the people at 5 so that at worst they might have to tell the machine not to restart a few times before they leave for the day. Since most people are at lunch around noon the full virus scan doesn't do much in the way of hurrting preformance.

Although while this works for us, it isn't going to work for everyone.
 
What about UPS's? I have a large one. Keeps me up an running for at least 3 hours if there is a power outage.
 
ryko said:
i was under the impression that turning your pc off and on every day significantly shortens the lifespan of your hardware....especially harddrives.
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Completely false. A rep from Seagate is a member on one of my car forums and addressed this issue some time back.
 
hamm3rhead said:
if we don't leave a carbon footprint how will anyone remember us? we can't all be seal-clubbers or hunt whales...
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That's it I'm joiing the Japanese whaling fleet. I want to do "research" on the blow holes. We will just slice those off and let the whales go on their merry way.
 
Tokamak said:
If you're folding, it's worth it.
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Not at all worth it for me.

Bigbacon said:
regardless of what it does to the environment. At least at home, shutting off the PCs at night saves me money each month.

Folding at home doesn't do anything good, it just wastes money. (IMO)
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Agreed

Bigbacon said:
Sleep mode has to use some power to keep the data in the ram. I think even the hibernation mode needs some power.
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Hibernate puts all your stuff thats in RAM to your hard drive, and then shuts your computer off. I put my laptop in sleep, and if I leave it for 10 minutes, it'll auto-hibernate.

GlacierFreeze said:
Where do people hear retarded things like this?

I've always shut all of my computer down everyday. Hell, I shut mine down every time I leave the house, which sometimes can be 2-3 times a day. No problems and saved money!
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+1 to the people hearing retarded things, and +1 to shutting computer down whenever I leave the house, and it works just fine
:)

On another note, I used to believe that leaving a computer on was better for it. Power bill went up. I started turning my computer off. Power bill went down. Computer still works.
 
honesty question:

couldn't a *good* windows network admin have power setting scripts for each computer on the domain that could put computers to sleep/hibernate at reasonable times?

this seems like such an easily fixed problem (at least for windows domains... which most large businesses run)
 
Seems like the two myths about turning your rig off shortening hardware life and the one about using more energy both come from the fact that they're somewhat true when talking about cars.

In a car, the oil leeches downward in the motor when not running and leaves parts less lubricated than ideal so every start creates an extra burden on the engine. The electric (and tiny) motors in hard drives have lower friction, less moving parts, and an extremely small load so it doesn't translate.

Starting a car takes more fuel than a car running at idle over the same period of time. That being said, the actual act of starting the car before it starts idling is what, maybe a second? So this myth is actually untrue in both cars and computers most of the time. Computers require only a very slight amount more power at start up as well-the hard drives will generally spin up, the fans spin at max until bios/software/other monitoring intervenes, optical drives may spin up, and booting an OS is more demanding than typing your homework. That being said, within the first minute the machine is on, the difference of power used in that minute versus a minute of idling (not in sleep or hibernate) is tiny.

One thing about these studies in general that always irks/confuses me and may change some of the numbers for CraftyBoredGamingChicken (lol) is that it doesn't say if the energy is tied to the PC only or to the monitor too. Monitors use about as much power as the office pc's that power them usually, and most of us are not running quad core, SLI'd, overclocked rigs at work.

Also, Mr. Chicken, the article and your numbers do pretty well agree-- "About half of 108 million office PCs in the USA are not properly shut down at night" from the article implies that the article is talking about 54 million computers. So the math on wasted energy works.

The part about 225 million pc's is sketchy because the census didn't ask "How many pc's do you have in your home?" to my knowledge. It probably asked more about the home's access/use of PC's. I could be wrong here, but I don't recall answering by going into my basement/workshop and counting cases/motherboards like I would have to if the 1st question were asked. Again-I could be wrong here.

I like your point about peak/off-peak usage. While the kW/hr. charge is normalized and not charged differently like cell phone minutes the pc's using power at night are using cheaper power.

One other thing we disagree on. 80 million professional employees =/= 80 million computers for use in business. How many people have a laptop (or two) assigned to them from work as well as a desktop (or two)? I work in a low-tech field and I know a number of my employees have a laptop and two desktops due to satellite offices. Then there's the matter of the number of non-professionals using computers for work which actually blows the math out of the water. How many people in warehouses and other shipping logistics alone would use a computer but not be professionals? A lot. I use this example b/c I am familiar with shipping, but the example applies in many different settings.

I like your look at it as opposed to just being a badass, but under scrutiny your analysis is suspect.
 
Hmm, we've tossed the idea around a couple times here at the office and just haven't gone anywhere with it. We use SMS to patch all our systems which I have been told doesn't work well with sleep mode (doesn't automatically send a WOL packet). Unfortunately, that is what we have to use for patching from our corporate offices.

I tested it at one point here in the office and after enabling the WOL function for the NIC the systems wouldn't recieve the updates at night. Supposedly when we move to SCCM it will give us the ability to wake systems from sleep mode to patch.....
 
The only time I have ever had computer hardware fail is when they are turned on - not while running. I used to tell everybody to leave their computers running, but the amount of electricity they use now makes it not worth it. The biggest failure are cheap power supplies. They never died while the computer was running - only at startup. Kinda like how lightbulbs usually die when you turn them on and not when they've been on for a few hours.

As far as the car motor analogy - it matches my computer experience. Most of the time I get called to help somebody with their car is because it won't start or started running poorly after starting - not that it died while they were driving.
 
People thinking it's "cool" to leave on your PC when not in use must also be the ones who loved $4/gallon gasoline. I cannot think of a single good reason to keep your typical desktop/notebook workstation running while not in use.

FOLDING is great, congratulations, but the fact is the same work could be done by efficiently built server farms at a fraction of the cost to the environment per FLOP. Distributed computing benefits those running the project because its free CPU power, they care more about free cycles than they care about environmentally friendly cycles.

Do yourself a favor, save the 5-10 bucks a month and shutdown. Do the rest of us a favor so we won't eventually have to live with brownouts when power companies are near their yearly max for emissions, because a few million tools think an idling PC is a necessity.
 
For the last 10 years I've left my PCs run 24/7. The last 6 months I started shutting it down between uses and shutting down the UPS. Turned the heat down 4 degrees too.

I can buy 30 more cigarettes per month with the savings. I smoke them while waiting for my computer to boot and while warming up my pickup in the morning. What I do for the environment.
 
ochadd said:
For the last 10 years I've left my PCs run 24/7. The last 6 months I started shutting it down between uses and shutting down the UPS. Turned the heat down 4 degrees too.

I can buy 30 more cigarettes per month with the savings. I smoke them while waiting for my computer to boot and while warming up my pickup in the morning. What I do for the environment.
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If you left your pickup running 24/7 for the past 10 years, it you wouldn't have had to waste all that time smoking and warming it up in the morning.

And by the logic of a few people in this forum. Your pick up would probably never have a service issue in that time because turning it off and starting it up causes all the damage......
 
InorganicMatter said:
I still can't believe the world hasn't discovered that this wonderful thing called "sleep mode" works as good on desktops as it does on laptops. Mac OS X has had it for ~10 years, and Windows finally fixed it in Vista. After 10 minutes of inactivity, my system goes to sleep. When I want to use it, I just sit down and tap the any key. It wakes up in 0.5 seconds, exactly like I left it. The system also automatically comes out of sleep for automatic updating. It's great!
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Sorry but you're misplacing the blame here. Sleep mode works fine in XP, and I can remember it working fine as far back as 2002. Just depended on your motherboard/BIOS. I'm sure there is a small percentage of cases where XP was 100% at fault, but generally speaking it has always been a hardware/firmware thing, and still is with some computers, windows or not.
 
Parja said:
What options are out there for XP? Almost all of our workstations are running on XP. IS insists we keep them running overnight and over weekends for updating and virus scans. There's gotta be a better way.
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There is, it's called WOL - Wake up on LAN. Enable it on every PC, and have it set to wake up at 6am, update, and by the time employees get there, their PCs are already on to work at 8am.
 
I shut my computer sown at night and when I'm at work during the late spring and summer. other than that it makes a nice space heater for the winter.
 
I do not turn my main gaming rig off for power savings directly, I turn it off because the fracking thing might as well be a 800w space heater when it is running. My bedroom temp goes up 1.5-2deg/hr with the machine on if I don't have the AC on, if the machine has a big work load like a render then it pumps out even more heat. I have come home from work after letting the machine do a big ass 3d render and walked into my bedroom and felt like I walked into a sauna.

All of my machines are set to go into sleep mode after 15m, the gamer rig is set to hibernate after 1hr.
 
Vesuvius said:
People thinking it's "cool" to leave on your PC when not in use must also be the ones who loved $4/gallon gasoline. I cannot think of a single good reason to keep your typical desktop/notebook workstation running while not in use.
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Your idea of "in use" differs from my idea of in use and many other people's ideas of "in use". Are you trying to claim your idea of "in use" is more important than that of everyone who does not agree with you?

Vesuvius said:
FOLDING is great, congratulations, but the fact is the same work could be done by efficiently built server farms at a fraction of the cost to the environment per FLOP. Distributed computing benefits those running the project because its free CPU power, they care more about free cycles than they care about environmentally friendly cycles.
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I'm guessing you don't have any idea of what it costs to build, maintain and update a server farm with the power of many of the distributed computing programs. The "free" CPU power you talk about is the only thing that makes distributed computing viable and a major powerhouse when it comes to computing cycles. Obviously, a large number of people find it rewarding to run the different DC projects and do so for different reasons. At least in the case of DC projects, the people running them know what they are doing and producing whereas the idea of donations to some organization don't give the same assurance. I sure as hell don't have the qualifications or the knowledge to research cancer projects but my computers can help in a different way.

Vesuvius said:
Do yourself a favor, save the 5-10 bucks a month and shutdown. Do the rest of us a favor so we won't eventually have to live with brownouts when power companies are near their yearly max for emissions, because a few million tools think an idling PC is a necessity.
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Actually, my computers add about $25-$30 per month to my electric bill. Then again, that's 5 systems running 24/7, 3 of which are overclocked quad cores with 100% CPU usage. In my apartment this winter, I barely had to run the electric furnace because the PCs helped out enough to keep the place warm. They also used less electricity to do the same job while doing something else worthwhile.

If you want to find the problem for brownouts and such, I'd suggest looking to the government for the problem. You know, stuff like making it practically impossible to build new power plants no matter what the type along with closing down power plants that reach a certain age and forcing them to close. Computers aren't causing those problems, government is.

 
superkdogg said:
Doubtful. I'm sure at some point you consumed energy generated from a nuclear plant using a uranium product in the plant. :D
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Nope, most of the power here is hydroelectric the rest is traditional co-generating plants. :p There was a nuclear plant in my area but it did not supply power on this side of the river, and it was demolished some time ago.
 
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