| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| sean |
Switching off....A while ago The Independent had an article about the amount of leccie wasted by things left on standby. One of the people they interviewed about this, who described himself as 'an IT consultant' or something similar, said roughly: "I always leave all my stuff on standby, if you keep switching your computer off you end up knackering the hard-drive and losing all your data." Is there any truth in this, or was he just a lazy slob? |
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| Bugs |
Lazy...surely? We switch off and unplug the computer *all* the time. Sometimes several times a day at the weekend. And at work everyone switches off their computer (though not everyone remembers to switch off their screens  ...mainly my German colleagues in fact! And me, about 80% of the time).
TD works with these type of people; he may have something more tolerant to say... |
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| judith |
Wouldn't an "IT consultant" know how to back up his hard disk? | ||||
| jema |
I switch off screens, and encourage other family members to switch off PC's but I keep a couple of mine on always 
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| Bernie66 |
And I have a constant battle to have TV's switched off at the waal socket not put on standby. A fight which I am not going to win 
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| Róisín |
I walk around the room I study in in college in the evenings, switching things off 
It really irritates me when people don't think about what they're doing, or have done. |
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| Bernie66 |
I am planning to put either timers on the lights in my kids rooms or sensors that will switch the lights/TV/stereo /etc etc etc off if there has been no movement for 2 mins 
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| dougal |
Re: Switching off....
Make that lazy, ignorant and foolish slob. Back in the days of radio *valves*, it might have been fair enough to want to leave them on, rather than having them go through a cooling and heating cycle, which would indeed tend to shorten their lives. But not with modern hard drives... And anyway, if by "standby" he was talking about leaving it in "sleep" mode - the hard drive would be powered down anyway! How DO you get a job as "IT consultant" to a journalist? BTW A screen running a "screen saver" is using just as much power as it would showing anything else. Its just supposed to be saving the phosphors in the tube from "burning in" or bleaching from overuse with always the same image in always the same place... Far better to put the screen to sleep - or even switch the screen off. |
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| Bugs |
At work, if you're going out for an hour at lunch...is it worth switching off your computer (balanced against the funny looks and the ten minutes spent answering the "are you going home" questions)? | ||||
| Róisín |
What about those flurescent (sp?) light strips in shops. I worked in a shop for four years where the manager insisted in leaving all the lights on, all night, even though the shop closed at six, because 'they used more electricity in being turned on and off than they did in staying on all night long'? | ||||
| dougal |
If you switched the machine completely *off*, "shutdown", then the machine has to reboot before you can do anything with it. (A minute or two?) That's slightly unproductive, but actually helpful to some rubbish software... Unless my machine was 'unstable' to the point of crashing, I'd say just put it to "sleep" over lunch. That will save over 90% of the power. And if your office is air-conditioned, it will reduce the demand, hence power consumption, for the aircon. A double win. Quite apart from Energy considerations, it is good computer security practice to be sure to log out of your computer/network before leaving your machine unattended... and to require logging on again after the computer has been in "sleep". |
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| wellington womble |
For years I worked in an office where the old bags used to switch the kettle off at the socket overnight - I was often first in, and used to spend ages waiting for bloody kettle to boil! It drove me absolutly barmy!
I don't really have a problem with switching things off at the socket, but does it really make a difference to a kettle? Surely its on or off? The only problem is, the sockets are around the back of desks and meter cupboards and things - can you get kind of switches to install in a more accessible places? |
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| dougal |
I think this is one of those "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" cases. It does, momentarily take a higher current to get the strip light to start. The "starter" usually allows a second or so of heating before the arc strikes (the tube starts to glow). http://home.howstuffworks.com/question337.htm But its a bit of a nonsense to think that the starter current, for that second, could possibly be so high as to use as much energy as the tube used in 15 hours... Er, no. I'd expect the starting current for that first second or so to be maybe double the light's normal consumption, but never 54000 times! (There's 54,000 seconds in 15 hours.) |
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| Bugs |
What do you mean by sleep? I lock my computer before leaving it for any length of time but I don't know of any other option than shutting it down.
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| Behemoth |
We have a company policy that all desk top pcs, monitors, printers, copiers, lights etc are turned off at the end of the day. Last person out has a responsibility to do an idiot check and first in turns it all on again. I don't turn my pc off at lunch time as this would draw attention as to how long I'm away from my desk. At home we trun off what we can but the only bit of kit that can't be turned off is the cable box 
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| dougal |
As usual its simpler on a Mac! You can Shutdown or put it to "Sleep" in suspended animation ready to be reawakened by a tap on the keyboard, (or if you click the peferences, at a specific time, by a network event or a ring on its modem). (Or, with OS X, you can log out.) With PCs, six different levels of sleep are defined, but given differing names in different versions of Windows, and by differnt manufacturers in their bumf. have a look at this: http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20020927S0028; 
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| Andy B |
Blimey, electric comes out of your running costs, less spent on running costs = more profit ! |
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| Lozzie |
Bugs - when you go to switch your computer off, does it not give you a menu of options - something like "Switch Off", "Stand By" and "Re-start"?
I typically put my computer on standby if I am going to be away for anything longer than a few minutes - it takes about 45 seconds to get its ar$e in gear again once I wiggle the mouse to wake it up. Plus I turn off speakers and monitor (and printer, if needs be). I used to have a computer that would automatically put itself in a low-power state if it was unused for XX minutes. I must see if my current version can do that, too. I wish more people could see the sense of switching lights etc off. Many of my neighbours burn porch and driveway lights all night long, and I am sure it is unnecessary for shop windows and floodlit buildings to remain lit all night long. It was very refreshing on holiday to see that even street lights (in rural areas) went off at midnight. The view of the night sky was incomparable ... |
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| Jonnyboy |
Those strip lights will have their lifespan reduced by the number of 'starts' they perform, so there is a trade off between switching off and leaving on. It may apply in hospitals or places that open early and shut lat, but certainly not in a 9 to 5 office. |
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| dougal |
Even more emphatically, from a University of Florida webpage: "The old adage about not turning off fluorescent lights if you're out of the room less than ten minutes is no longer true with modern ballasts. Frequent starts reduce tube life slightly, but the energy saved outweighs the shortened life span." http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/EH224 Shouldn't this be in the Energy Efficient Lighting thread?
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| thos |
At home everything to do with the computer seems to have its own little transformer in the plug, so apart from the case and monitor everything is plugged into daisy-chained extension leads with their own switch. I turn the computer and monitor off and flip the switches.
The TV and audio systems are also on a swithed extension lead, so everything gets turned off properly. At work though the instruction is to turn off the monitor and 'log-off and restart' the computers so they are 'on' with the log-on screen. This enables them to run virus checks, update software and run their spyware and porn-spotters programs overnight. |