[WEB4LIB] Re: Powering down PCs -> automated power management

[Richard Wiggins]

This discussion keeps veering back to "do you power down the PC or not?" The
middle ground is using Energy Star compliant PCs and making sure power
management is turned on.  Certainly this is a local decision but people
should think through the cost issue even if the environmental side doesn't
appeal.  The monitor is the big culprit and therefore the place for big
savings: From pc-hardware-faq/video/part2:

...
4. Energy use:  While modern monitors use a lot less energy than their
older cousins, the aggregate energy usage is not something to be ignored.  A
typical monitor uses between 60 and 200 Watts.  Thus at a $.10 per KWH
electric rate such a monitor will cost between $48 and $160 a year for
electricity.  During the night, 1/2 to 2/3 of this is wasted for every
monitor that is left on.
...

Another way of saying it is if you leave a monitor on 24 X 7, over the life
of the monitor, you can pay as much for the electricity as you paid for the
monitor!

It's when you multiply by a huge fleet that you feel the costs, or the
savings.  A library with 100 PCs might save a few thousand dollars a year. 
A large university might save a million dollars a year by convincing
everyone to simply enable power management!

Unfortunately a lot of people leave their monitors running flying toasters
24 X 7.  Screen savers are a huge waste.  Setting Power Management to simply
turn off the monitor is the better answer.  A lot of NT sysadmins I know
turn off the monitor by hand when not administering the machine.

Letting Energy Star turn off the monitor -- or reaching up and hitting the
power button on a personal machine when you leave for the day -- will not
interfere with any overnight centralized backups, or disk defrags, or
participating in Parabon.  It's risk-free cost savings.  It's a no brainer.

/rich


------Original Message------
From: Dan Marmion <dmarmion at nd.edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list <web4lib at webjunction.org>
Sent: August 31, 2000 11:52:29 AM GMT
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Re: Powering down PCs


...
Seriously, I've concluded that, strictly from the PC's point of view, the
best answer I can give is, it doesn't matter.  From an ecological point of
view, you certainly want to run earth-friendly machines, but assuming you
do, I think arguments for and against frequent (i.e., daily or weekly)
powering down are purely local.

Richard Wiggins
Consulting, Writing & Training on Internet Topics
www.netfact.com/rww         wiggins at mail.com
517-349-6919 (home office)  517-353-4955 (work)  
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