SillyDog701

[James]

Let's revisit an old question. New computers... should we turn them off or leave them on in Sleep Mode at night?

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[iJohnE]

I always put mine in Hibernate.

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[Don_HH2K]

As a laptop user, I'm in a position where I can (well, used to be able to) put the machine into Standby and then cut the power from the wall. Nowadays I shut down fully and then cut the power.

As far as current standards go, on average you're looking at a PC running below ten watts when in Standby, and about half that when powered off. Monitors in Standby can vary greatly according to some reports, though for the most part you're talking under five watts when in Standby and less than two when powered off.

Watch out with peripherals like speakers and printers. The transformers they use are often much less efficient than those built into PCs. For example, the official power adapter for my speakers constantly uses seven watts, regardless of whether or not the speakers are turned off or cranked up to full blast. What's even more interesting is that these are only four watt speakers to begin with, so the other three are lost to the transformer itself or as heat. I've since wired them directly to my power supply (they even turn on and off with the PC now, which is cool), though I don't expect you to go to that extreme.

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[James]

Thanks, Guys. I found this online. It appears that the consensus is to shut down at night and save some energy (as well as some money).

http://www.howstuffworks.com/question328.htm/printable

What about during the day, when neither of us is home for an eight hour stretch?

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[beanboy89]

I used to never shut my desktop or laptop off, but in the past six months or so, I've begun shutting them down at night when I'm not using them. I now put the laptop into sleep mode when I'm not using it to prevent it from overheating (which it does quite well). As for my desktop, it also produces quite a lot of heat, along with noise, and light. To make it easier to sleep in my room, I just shut it down at night and reboot in the morning.

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[Antony]

Personally, I rarely turn off the iMac at night, (nor do all the external HDDs connected to it). As for my MacBook Pro, unless I know that I won't use it for a long period of time, I simply let it go sleep every night.

My iMac is usually doing some encoding tasks overnight, hence it makes sense not to switching it off.

There are other devices that plugged into the wall overnight, such as ADSL modem, wireless routers (Time Capsule and AirPort Extreme Base Station), laser printer etc.

One thing I am more concerned is electrical surge or damages caused from lightning. Recently, I purchased a number of rated surge protectors, so I can sleep with piece in my mind.

It's not saying that I am wasteful in terms of energy, I do try to purchase energy efficient products.

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