How Windows XP Wasted $25 Billion of Energy

This is really crazy when you think about, totally ridiculous.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/11/how_windows_xp.php

 

Does that mean, I have to buy winVISTA against my will, to save the world

 

i never pay attention to the power-saving features anyways, but its nice to know Vista will be more power friendly

 

What if all these computers installed Distributed Computing?

 

Hello,
I waste about 30-40 dollars on computer-related electricity every month.
Mrk

 

Well...I am a big believer in letting my machines run 24/7. Sleep mode always left alot to be desired in my opinion.

Can someone tell me if the new Vista will have the ability to over ride some default sleep mode ?

Now the monitor is a whole different ball game when you are finished turn the damn thing off...forget all that screensaver and auto off after 10 minutes or whatever crap. Save your energy in other areas lights, programable thermostats and the like. Let the computer live and breath Auto update monitor itself and all that stuff. Get a good battery backup with auto shut down when the power fails (it can sleep and use no power then) My computer rests a little at reboot...

 

Hello,
I have machines that have been running for months without turning them off. And then only if I upgrade a part or there's a power outage in the 'hood. Computers are like people. They should not only stop once.
Mrk

 

Why do Eco's and 'Greens always show 'Cooling Towers' as though they were some giant chimney belching carbons etc., into atmosphere..

When in actual fact they are the most eco-friendly piece of kit you could imagine.....their job is to cool steam generated in the manufacture of electricity and turn it back into reusable water over and over again, saving trillions of gallons of water that would otherwise be wasted.....


Cochise.

 

Hm hm, and why do we use drinkwater to flush the toilet

 

IMO this is a problem better handled by the hardware manufacturers. The new Core 2 Duo is a step in the right direction, not taking power it doesn't need. It would be ideal if an idle computer left on would use virtually no electricity. Hard drive, CPU, video card, sound card, and power supplies could/should all be made to throttle down and not use extra voltage when they're not doing anything. This would be ideal because it would take less time to recover than it would for the system to come out of standby.

For my part I do at least pay attention to power consumption of the hardware I choose. Heat is wasted electricity, that power has to go somewhere and if it's not being used then it's released in the form of heat. Heat also kills electronic components and causes errors, so it's better in more ways than one. Power supplies often have an efficiency rating, new CPUs step down the power they consume when not needed, fans throttle down the power used when not needed, and so on. Systems that I never play games on I just use all on-board components and low wattage high-efficiency power supplies, LCD screens take way way less power than CRTs, laptops take less than any of them, and so on. I think progress is being made, but I think that the contribution from Microsoft is really minimal when compared to what the hardware vendors can (and should) do (and what they are doing). Of course maintaining and optimizing (not necessarily tweaking) the computer so it doesn't have to do twice as much work for every operation helps a little, too

Hmmm... I wonder if we could get adware vendors for all the extra electricity usage they create by running people's CPUs at 100% all the time

 

its been debated. basically, theres other (bigger) ways energy is wasted or leaked.

 

I don't use any of those fancy energy saving functions...I suppose if they worked better I would, however it seems everything Microsoft touches they instill automatic features that make life worse.

Here's one that actually seems to work though, and maybe it will even save Mr. K a dollar or two. If you are going to be away from the computer for a few hours it would be worth it to manually put the computer in "Stand By". It is accessed from the regular turn off computer menu. It is a manual control. you turn it on, you turn it off, by moving your mouse or something. Works pretty good. I never paid any attention to the button until I saw someone else use it. Then I tried to find some fault it's function, but could not. Save money. Be happy!


-HandsOff

 

We can blame the bad guys too for all the hours we lost on removing their malwares. But that's not good either, because the bad guys gave many people jobs in the malware and anti-malware industry.
The more electricity we use, the better for the electricity industry, which also give jobs to people.
Jobs = food on the table for the whole family. Lets keep it that way.
Internet is a battefield for a war between the good and the bad guys without killing people.

 

Yeah, power waste is a serious thing. News like this make me sad
I applaud initiatives like 80 PLUS for PSU efficiency, "Carbon free" PCs, RoHS for harmful substances, etc
Visit climatecare.org

 

After reading this and comparing the claim to those of the tobacco industry, gun manufacturers, and the fast-food industry, I would not be surprised to see a class-action lawsuit claiming irreparable financial injury in Microsoft’s future.

 

Interesting point

Side stories:
-I´ve seen external drives(USB/Firewire) die because of improper power management. The disk inside doesn´t spin down and fails prematurely. Just imagine the data loss
-Mainboards lacking fan monitoring or thermal throttling
-Bad drivers

 

Good one.
Not to mention some not-so-thrifty commercial security vendors who also like to spike-UP the CPU during their sweeps too

I'm also a proponant of either shutting off the units manually by button or booting down via mouse-clickie. But i also admit am one of those who allow the PC's to go 24/7 indefinitely sometimes for months with the only drawback having to replace on occasion the PS unit.

With LongHorn, (uh-hem ), i mean Vis(t)a, it's sure to draw on more juice directly as well as the beefed-up hardware it'll require to drive some features. So goes the revolving door syndrome of Micro

 

spin down? you're telling me that they have to do a cool down like they were doing aerobics or something?

-HandsOff

 

I mean power off the hard drive when not in use so the mechanics stops
Perhaps that´s(spin down) an incorrect expression? I´ve read it many times on forums and hardware reviews if I remember well

 

I reuse my servers heat to dry cloths.. even in winter in our spare room (with no heating), my server can dry a load of washing in 24hrs

 

LoL,

there's a novell approach on minimizing dryer use. String a coupla lines and you're all set



snowbound

 

IMO you should never let your PC run 24/7, only power on the damned thing when you´re using it, I really don´t get some of you guys.

I always put it in Stand-By mode, but perhaps I should shut it down completely at night, because it keeps consuming electricity of course. Then I would only have to boot it once a day, not bad, at least in theory. Sadly the standby function does not always work correctly, I think MS really needs to fix this annoying problem.

 

When the house heating system stopped operating the pc fan blowing warm air out the back kept my hands from freezing. My old pc did not have enough power to do nickr's job.