[marko]

With power bills increasing and climate control making headlines, I'm wondering who amongst us worries about how we use our computers - are they really smart enough nowadays to shut themselves down and use no power or are we actually using more power to start up our machines a few times a day than it would take to leave them on 24/7?.

Your vote and opinions, as always, welcomed

[FreeWareFan]

I'm maintaining ratio on torrent sites, so often leave PC and shutdown it only at night.

[Igogo]

My PC work 24/7 - crunching for [email protected]

[John T]

I have one of those free energy monitors that the power company were pushing
in order for me to save the planet and those who would inherit it, etc, etc,
After fitting it & watching your power consumption, you will learn that switching
off your computer or laptop when not in use is quite a good idea !
Problem solved, I saved the world !

John

[mizdoc]

I usually shut down after I'm finished using it. Not to save energy though. My first PC used to have a resource leak that I couldn't find, so I had to shut it down and reboot it to "refresh" my resources and so, of course, I would shut it down when finished. So it's just routine....when finished, shut it down.

[James (Jim) Hillier]

John T, on 06 July 2011 - 09:16 PM, said:

Problem solved, I saved the world !

John

LOL. Good on ya John!!

[James (Jim) Hillier]

Arguments have been made for and against over the years and in the end I guess it comes down to how an individual utilises the computer and personal choice.

One of the most common arguments for leaving a machine turned on is that the constant heating/cooling cycle will eventually cause solder joints to crack and subsequently, poor or zero connections. I doubt that would actually be the cause of too many breakdowns.

One of the main arguments for switching off is because leaving it on will consume a lot more electricity. Seriously????? Have these people never heard of "Power Plans"; sleep mode and hibernation?

Me, I leave my computers switched on all the time. The only times I ever switch them off is:

1) If I am going away for an extended period and
2) If there are thunderstorms about.

That said, I do spend a lot of time on the machines and so it is mainly for convenience.

[marko]

I personally have been away from the actual electronics side of IT for a while now but of old I always remembered it was usually the 'client' side of things where electrical issues occured rather than the 'server' side - normally this was due to the fact it was always the 'clients' (in other words the desktop machines) which were turned off at the end of the day then on again in the morning and it's usually always when firing up the machines something would blow - hence the reason why we rarely had a problem with the server machines as they were on 24/7 unless they had to be brought down for some reason.

Suffice to say, technology and reliability has improved tenfold since then, but if we're talking about which is best for your computer I personally would opt for leaving it on and allowing the machine to manage itself, if we're talking about power consumption then it would have to be to shut it down.

Sleep mode, hibernation and any other form of standby facility will consume power from the mains, the exact amount of which I couldn't say with any certainty, but it stands to reason that unless a machine of any kind is completely powered off it will have to use some power to be in a position to 'resume' from where it left off. Laptops can pull from it's battery power without a main charge when in hibernation but it will only be able to do this for so long before finally loosing it's state when fully discharged.

[dstrout]

In the poll I put in "On during the day, shut down at night". However, what I actually do is turn it off if I expect to be away for an hour or more. I dual boot Windows and Ubuntu, but I boot Ubuntu 80% of the time, and it comes up really fast, so it's no problem starting it up. Unfortunately, Ubuntu's power-saving modes (standby and hibernate) do not appear to work on my machine. If they did, I would probably put the computer on standby when I expected to be away for longer periods of time.

[Prads]

I turn it off most of the time but when I am going to return back working on my computer after let's say less than an hour, I put it to Sleep.

[theocello]

I leave my PC on 24/7 because I run a "for gratis" server for a charitable, non-profit organization, but I would do so anyway because I have found, through many years of experience, that I have less problems and have really never noticed any spike in my utility costs.

[Anatolij]

I always turn it off myself.

[dstrout]

theocello, on 07 July 2011 - 05:42 AM, said:

I leave my PC on 24/7 because I run a "for gratis" server for a charitable, non-profit organization, but I would do so anyway because I have found, through many years of experience, that I have less problems and have really never noticed any spike in my utility costs.

Well...You're obviously not going to see spikes if it's on all the time - spikes (or the opposite - dips I guess?) occur when you change the average uptime of your computer. Your computer remains steadily on all the time; thus, your power bill will stay steady.

[rr032]

HI Guys, I normally let the computer go into standby mode , same with the screen, Because I have so much crap running at startup and slow processor etc ect I caln't wait 5 min each time I want to use the damn thing .

[dstrout]

marko, on 06 July 2011 - 11:00 PM, said:

Sleep mode, hibernation and any other form of standby facility will consume power from the mains, the exact amount of which I couldn't say with any certainty, but it stands to reason that unless a machine of any kind is completely powered off it will have to use some power to be in a position to 'resume' from where it left off. Laptops can pull from it's battery power without a main charge when in hibernation but it will only be able to do this for so long before finally loosing it's state when fully discharged.

Actually...wrong. Standby does use power, but hibernation uses no power. The reason for this is that standby stores your computer session in memory, and your memory chips go blank if they lose power. Thus, standby is a low power mode that retains just enough power to keep the session stored in memory intact. Hibernation, on the other hand, writes your session data to the hard disk, which, of course, retains its data even when the computer is turned off completely. That way, hibernation can have the PC completely shut off. That is why it takes longer to enter hibernation than standby, why there is a file in your C: drive called hiberfil.sys that should be the same size as your installed memory, and why it takes longer to go into hibernation than sleep or standby mode. For more info on this, see the Wikipedia hibernation article.

[marko]

I take my hat off to you on that one dstrout, I should have known better with the 'hiberfil' file - you're 100% correct mate

[dstrout]

rr032, on 09 July 2011 - 01:16 AM, said:

HI Guys, I normally let the computer go into standby mode , same with the screen, Because I have so much crap running at startup and slow processor etc ect I caln't wait 5 min each time I want to use the damn thing .

Maybe you should look into eliminating some of the startup crap...or upgrading

[jjj]

Our main computer is left running all day. just goes into standby when not needed, I too cant wait the five minutes for it to bootup.
And. to be pedantic. unless turned off at the power point a computer still uses some power irrespective of what mode it's in, and there
are all those transformers for the speakers, printers.scanners, routers, external Drives all adding to global warming which are seldom disconnected.

[marko]

Hmm, you know jjj, it's been a while since I actually did have a hand in the ole electrical side of IT but the more I think about it the more I'm beginning to wonder. We used to have to use WOL (Wake On Lan) call's to remote machines which were powered down/hibernated, etc, so I guess it stands to reason that power must be getting used somewhere on a computer for a remote WOL command to work. Here's a guy on YouTube talking about this very thing ...

[James (Jim) Hillier]

Well I don't leave peripherals (printer, speakers, etc.) turned on at all, only when I need to use them.

One thing that does need to be pointed out here: In 'shutdown' state a desktop computer is still consuming power, and the difference in power consumption between shutdown state and hibernation or sleep mode is so minor as to be completely negligible.

The only way a desktop computer will consume zero power is to switch it off completely, either via a PSU switch or at the power point.

So, when we say "switch off" we are talking about completely switching off and not merely using the "Shut down" option in Windows.

Another point for consideration: We do not completely turn off other electronic entertainment devices such as TVs, DVD players, home theater equipment, etc. When we click the power button on the remote control, those devices stay in stand-by (or readiness) mode and are still consuming a small amount of power.

Also, in terms of power usage in the average household, the home computer would be very at the very bottom of the power consumption chain.

Not debating one way or the other here, just putting forward some observations for consideration.