GigaMegaBlog

Continuing with my Kill-A-Watt experimentation, I decided to look at the power consumption of my PCs.  Specifically, I wanted to check a few things that I had assumed to be true, but never actually verified:

1. Putting a computer in sleep (aka standby) mode saves a lot of electricity over leaving it running.
2. Turning off a computer saves a lot of electricity over putting it in standby mode
3. Notebook computers use a lot less electricity than desktops

Here are the numbers for my oldest PC, a circa 2005 HP Pavilion a747c with a Pentium 4 CPU, running Windows XP:

HP Pavilion and Windows XP

Flea power?

Power usage while it is powered on and doing nothing isn’t great, more than a 90W lightbulb.   In contrast, power usage while in standby mode is barely more than a nightlight.  When turned off completely energy consumption  is not quite zero — this is true of most (maybe all?) computers with a wired network connection.  This Microsoft article calls this phenomenon “flea power”, a term that I’d never come across before today.

Here are the numbers for a new desktop PC, which I assembled earlier this year.  The key hardware components when it comes to power usage are the power supply unit, which is an inexpensive 550W unit from ePower, and the CPU, which is an already obsolete AMD Athlon X2.  I would expect most new desktop computers to get similar or better power usage numbers.

Homebrew desktop and Windows 7

The most striking thing here is how much less this PC uses than the older HP above, especially considering how much more powerful it is.  Credit for this likely goes to the new PSU and chip technologies — manufacturers have really focused on driving down power consumption since the HP was made a few years ago.    The other surprising number is that this PC uses significantly more power than the older PC when turned off — some of this would be going to the network connection, but I’m not sure if that accounts for all of it.

Next up is a low budget notebook computer, a Dell Vostro 1000 from late 2007:

Vostro 1000 notebook and Vista

As expected, even a cheap notebook outpaces a brand new desktop when it comes to power consumption.  Manufacturers have been paying attention to notebook power consumption all along, in order to make the battery last longer when unplugged.  Much of this low energy technology also benefits power consumption when plugged in.  The difference between the notebook and desktop numbers is even more stark when you consider that the notebook is powering the LCD screen too — I didn’t include screen power consumption in the desktop numbers.

Incidentally, the Vostro used absolutely zero power when not turned on because it uses a wireless network connection.

The Hummer of notebooks, a Dell XPS M1730 is last and, surprisingly, least:

Dell XPS notebook and XP

Big, but not bad

Considering that this beast dwarfs the Vostro in terms of screen size and CPU speed, the low power consumption was a pleasant surprise.  Perhaps you really do get what you pay for sometimes, or perhaps energy efficiency simply has advanced that quickly in the 18 months between when my 2 notebooks were built.

Incidentally, the XPS comes with some purely gratuitous bling – LEDs on the cover, keyboard and speakers which blink, pulsate, or do whatever else floats your boat.  I was slightly surprised to see absolutely no measurable difference when I turned on the full complement of lights — LEDs are definitely the light source (and bling source) of the future.

So, it would seem that only 2 of my initial 3 beliefs hold true, for my pack of PCs anyway.  I’ll definitely be making sure that I put unused PCs to sleep before walking away, but powering them off entirely simply isn’t worth the hassle.

No, I’m not talking about a version of the board game for the iPhone — that’s been done.   ( I predicted that, too, just not out loud).

I’m talking a shameless, glorious capitalistic monopoly.

You just know that Steve Jobs wants it.  Bad.  He coulda been, shoulda been, woulda been way richer than Bill Gates, if only that big dork Woz hadn’t got them off on the wrong foot.  (That’s a pun – get it?)  Now, with the release of version 3.0 of the iPhone OS, all the pieces are in place for Jobs to take his rightful place at the top of the techie pantheon.

No, thats not me.

Apple will simply sail in the wake of  Microsoft’s battleship.  Consider:

1. By opening iPhone connectivity to all sorts of 3rd party devices, a huge hardware ecosystem rivaling the iPhone’s app support is going to spring up. Windows won the OS war partly because of all the hardware that was compatible with it, and only it.
2. By making peace with (or at least ending the cat-and-mouse game with) jailbreak applications, I believe (or at least wildly guess that) Jobs and co. are tacitly admitting that funneling all 3rd party apps through the narrow neck of the App Store approval process is counterproductive. Soon, the iPhone will be open to every sort of  software, including the nasty stuff.  Just like Windows!
3. The iPhone now has copy and paste support. Windows has copy and paste support. Coincidence? Yeah, right, and so is the fact that Britney Spears and I have the same birthday. We were totally separated at birth!!! (Wouldn’t it be cool if the Britney Spears blog gave me a trackback?)

Steve Jobs has no Belt. Yet.

Now that the iPhone is well along the path to a uber-gadget (nee smartphone) monopoly, it is clear what lies ahead:

1. Jobs becomes super-super-super-rich. Woz remains a big dork.
2. The EU sues Apple for bundling a cell phone on the iPhone.  Apple responds by releasing an iPhone-like gadget without an integrated cell phone, which they name the iPod.  The EU settles for a billion dollars.
3. The Linux zealots flock around the also-rans. Since the iPhone is actually running *nix, the zealots are forced to admit they were wrong all along and embrace Windows Mobile.  Hey, it has a keyboard with a Ctrl key!
4. Jobs reveals that the Fake Steve Jobs blog was actually written by him, and he’s glad that he called the Linux zealots “freetards”.
5. Apple’s press releases begins referring to Jobs as Stephen P. Jobs.   Jobs begins wearing a belt.
6. Somebody at Apple finally realizes that naming new iPhones after version numbers is decidedly uncool.
7. iPhone Titania introduces support for Adobe Flash. Havoc ensues. Freetards bray “I told you so”. Stephen P. Jobs brays “I told you so first, freetards”.

And so it all comes crashing down to the ground. The iPhone will continue to limp along with 98.3% of the uber-gadget market, but clearly the curse of the Monopoly will have struck again.  The iPhone will join Windows in the ignomy of being a ridiculously successful failure.

But as the Terminator has taught us , the future can be changed.  It’s not too late, Stephen.  Banish Adobe Flash to the hell from whence it came.  Don’t wait for the App Store to approve iTimeTravel, do it now!

I’m sure you’ve all heard about the Silent Planet Killers that we are allegedly harboring in our living rooms: TVs, VCRs and other consumer electronics which burn electricity even when turned off.

I have a co-worker who jumped on that bandwagon early on and dutifully switches off the living room power bar each evening.  She’s a pinko, so I didn’t take her self-righteous claims about the resulting the power savings seriously.

Over the past few years, though, I’ve seen this claim repeated in a lot of magazine and newspaper articles, some of which were written by people not previously suspected of being pinkos.  When I saw the “turn off your power bar” advice recently repeatedly on Morningstar, a stock market research site and generally sensible handmaiden to capitalism, I decided it was time to finally take a serious look at the issue.

I recently bought a few P3 Kill A Watt devices in preparation for building some Tweet A Watts (no relation) for the main receptacles in my apartment.  As a way of testing  both the Kill A Watt units and the Silent Planet Killer claim, I plugged one into my living room wall and began unplugging things.

I started out with the TV turned on, whispering about some golfers, and the DVD and VCR players turned on but just sitting around and looking pretty.  For the purpose of this experiment, I brought an old incandescent 60W bulb out of storage and turned it on, along with a 2nd lamp burning a basically equivalent 13W compact florescent bulb.

The Kill A Watt Experiment

And the final 6 mA and 1 watt?  It turned out to be the DC adapter for my Linksys router — the Kill A Watt readings didn’t drop to 0 until I unplugged the adapter as well.  What’s up with that, Cisco?  Building global warming, one watt at a time?

So what can we conclude from all this?

1. The Silent Planet Killers in my living room, combined, burn 9 watts (not counting the soon-to-be-banished lighted power bar).  Almost 3/4 of what the fluorescent light bulb burns.
2. Would you leave 3/4 of a lightbulb on all the time?  Me neither.
3. My wife says, tough, she’s not going to reprogram the TV every morning.
4. My wife says that I have too much time on my hands.
5. My router’s DC power adapter is the real global menace.
6. As well as my wife.