[Closed] Turning off your PC overnight

people in 'well meaning but too lazy to actually save the planet' shocker

it's exactly the attitude that 'it takes too long' that is the reason we are ALL DOOMED*

*well our childrens childrens children are

I quite agree mr wright.

My PC and the last 2 before have wake on Lan.

I use a 5+ year old workstation at work running NT over a 10Mb LAN and it's up and running in well under a minute. If they're talking about it taking too long to log on they need to get their profiles sorted.

Piss poor PC management then. I worked in a large IT office and one of the jobs of the security staff was to reprimand folk for leaving PCs switched on overnight.

johnners - depends on what software you're running, I have a brand spanking new quad core at work, and to start up all my modeling software to start the day takes 2-3 minutes, none of it is network loaded, thats just the time taken to start all the apps. The boot is pretty quick itself. However mines a license server too so it stays on all the time so me and others can use the software from elsewhere.

My past 2 computers have had suspend/hibernate features but none ever worked properly, often keeling over and losing work.

I dont currently leave my home PC running but I used to as it was so bloody unreliable on boot that once it booted properly I didnt want to turn it off, but ultimately I should just have spent a while sorting the faults 🙂

It would save a LOT of cash and carbon if people did sort out the suspend/hibernate.

I agree with all the above

" they need to get their profiles sorted"

Our company has a policy also of storing profiles in our Chippenham office so they get loaded over the WAN. The idea is that developers can move offices/PCs easily, but in reality those people who move around a lot get laptops so no real need for roaming profiles.

The WAN capacity has been increased recently and this is helping, but still..

The bit about restoring context is true though. I usually have about 5 applications up with various things loaded. Hibernate can usually deal with this. Macs don't have problem with it do they?

When I worked in an office I used to switch the PC on as I walked past on my way to the coffee machine, then log in as I walked past on my way to the post room. By the time i got back it was good to go.

Where's the problem?

Sorry coffeeking, I was just talking a simple boot to logon screen so not a useful comparison. Simple OA environment too so I'll shut up now.

Profiles over WAN open a whole new can of worms.

SST - well that's what *I* do. But then my laptop hibernates 9/10 anyway.

SST, its not so much the boot time thats the problem, its getting everything back as you want it again the next day. Lots of people dont just use word or a company specific software with a fixed layout etc. For example I have 2 23" widescreens, I put code in one window, output in the other. Or I use one package on one screen while using the other package in the other and things like dialogue boxes start popping up in odd places when you do this, when you have it sorted and leave it powered on windows seems to remember this, but powering off seems beyond windows and the windows and dialogues manage to completely re-arrange themselves each time - doesn't sound like much but it really screws with your workflow so I can understand some of those who do leave them on. My monitors power off so I'm saving a good chunk, but as said in my other post I cant power off anyway.

Plus a lot of bosses expect you to be working AT 9, rather than booting your computer and fetching a coffee at 9. I'm fortunate enough not to have that.

Odd I have a 26" and 19" monitor running different windows in each, even after powering down it remembers where they last were.

If you're a programmer maybe you could write a program to restore everything for you on boot up. If it's a genuine problem maybe there's a market?

Everything switched off at the wall in my office. Slapped wrist if you don't.

90% of people aren't programmers or other people would lose something if they switched off.

And as for not turning monitors off! 👿

XP [u]does[/u] have both Standby and Hibernate options.

To get to Hibernate just hold Shift on the Shutdown screen and the Standby option will turn into Hibernate.

Also you can set the Power Options so that it will automatically Hibernate after being left idle for an hour.

My home PC gets switched off at the wall every night, but I'm using Vista so it takes less than a minute to boot from cold. My office PC gets left on so I can Remote Desktop to it from home, but it's set to turn off the hard disk, monitor and throttle back the CPU when it is idle.

coffeeking: there are plenty of apps that automatically tile all your windows the way you want them. I would imagine that on two 23" monitors such apps are essential.

If the offices are heated it's all a big con. Any energy used by a computer left on is turned into heat. If there's lots of computers, then obviously the heating system doesn't have to carry the load. I think we are talking about insignificant figures here in terms of overall consumption.

However if you're airconditioned, it's a different story.

You lot obviously work at places which don't care that much about security. Working where I do, we've always been required to switch computers off at the end of the day. Unfortunately our rubbish computer setup involving almost 5 year old PCs (which weren't exactly state of the art then), lots of network stuff in the background we don't know anything about, and excessive bloated mandatory software means it can take upwards of 10 minutes to boot in the morning. Fortunately I have a separate stand alone machine I do much of my real work on which isn't saddled with all those issues I can do stuff with whilst I wait!

Our aircon is on a timer, so is turned off at night. I suspect the extra heat generated by all the PCs left on at night is partly offset by the saving in less aircon used to heat the place in the morning.

My uptime is whatever the shonky Norfolk powerlines can supply without cutting out 😮 Turn my PC off? What an odd thought... (Gentoo Linux) I have cut down the number of machines on my network though 🙂

Windows laptop for work strops all day if I haven't rebooted it or turned it off. But then Sims.Net can't seem to run for more than 8 hours without locking up...

Epicyclo: your heating argument is totally spurious. Heat is just a byproduct of a PC, whereas it is obviously the main purpose of a heating system.

Guess which one is considerably more efficient at heating a room?

Too_Punk_Too_Funk: So does Gentoo Linux not let you turn it off then? 🙄 maybe you should try Vista?

I hibernate my work PC at night. It takes about 5-10 minutes to turn on though. But I'm on work time, so I whack it on, go make a cuppa tea and chill out for 5 minutes. 🙂

I've been considering a low powered mini-itx (800mhz ish) for home (tiny server), so I'm not using as much juice through the day and night.

all my desktops can hibernate

{withdraws in quiet disbelief, closes door on thread}

Oh, I could turn it off... But it is much a server as a desktop in some respects.

If I tried Vista I would _have_ to turn it off...

I know my systems and I know which I trust 🙂 Can you honestly say you know what is going on inside your Vista box?

If the PCs in our classrooms are left on, the cleaners flick the circuit breakers to off. Switching them back on again trips the breaker in the next room, so I have to unlock that room and climb onto a desk to switch it on again. Still only takes a couple of minutes to boot and log in though.

2. You lose your context (we are mostly programmers)

I am too, but the tools I use remember their context, as does my brain...

I am in charge of the IT in a school and they have recently gone over to doing computerised registration in the morning. Now most teachers leave their computers on as it apparently takes too long to boot up after they have got to their class room late from drinking their coffee. I have setup a shutdown command from the server and that seems to be doing the trick!!

Guess which one is considerably more efficient at heating a room?

Still a spurious argument though

If the offices are heated it's all a big con.

[i]2. You lose your context (we are mostly programmers)[/i]
As a programmer/developer whatever the current term is, I switch mine off each night so that I do loose context, plus it takes what about 10 minutes max to boot and load the enviroment again. A nice amount of time to put the kettle on and ponder why your code isn't working 🙂
I've tried hibernate, but i've found it can be a bit hit and miss wrt to network services.

aracer: erm not all the electricaly energy in a PC becomes heat energy you know. There is noise, moving parts, light etc.

aracer: erm not all the electricaly energy in a PC becomes heat energy you know. There is noise, moving parts, light etc.

Meanwhile, with the heating for a large building, how much heat is lost outside the building with exhausts, hot pipes etc.?

(oh I do love a pedantic OT argument 😉 )

You lot must be using rubbish development environments - all the ones I use come back in exactly the state I left (I even normally get a choice of multiple states). It's far more of a problem normally restoring the state of my brain in the morning.

Light from what?

The monitor, if it's left on, plus various status LEDs on (at least one on the front, another couple on your network card and several more on the motherboard).

Why do moving parts use energy...

Erm.... that's how they move?? Electrical -> Magnetic -> Kinetic
And that kinetic only generates a tiny amount of heat (decent PC fans use fluid bearings so friction is minimal).

what forms of energy the computer generates are leaving the room?

Most of them? Heat, sound, light, magnetic,...

I think you need to sit down and think about it for a moment. If 100% of electrical energy eventually becomes heat in every electrical device then why would you ever need something specifically designed as a heater? You could just stick the telly on to get warm 🙄

Are you seriously suggesting that heaters are some kind of elaborate con?

You guys who's desktops take a long time to log on need some serious help. It's not my speciality but I'll come and tell you what needs doing for 500 quid a day. And that's cheap.

Losing context? Might be worth getting a memory. Everyone works in a context, everyone multitasks. Presumably the rest of us are better at gripping the context when we start everything up in the morning. Any programmer/developer that does not checkout their code before they leave and check it in when they come back into work should also question their programming ethics, they're doing it wrong. Or their company is.

Think you got your checkins/outs the wrong way round there samuri.
But no I don't checkin code at the end of every day, just when I am finished making my changes (which may be the same day or may take a week).

As someone who had to use a PC at work, but actually deals day to day with buildings and what happens in them almost all offices don't have a problem with heating but with cooling instead.

Why do the moving parts use energy given conservation of momentum?

it's called 'friction' :o)

well that's not my area of speciality either. 😉

The radiator in our office is turned off all year, the computers keep it warm enough in winter.

In summer it can be anything up to thirty degrees when you first walk in in the morning before you open the windows.

And checking in code every night is a sign you need better version control software...

Too_Punk_Too_Funk: sorry I just noticed I missed your reply. Yes I have a [i]fairly[/i] good idea what is running on my Vista box. But some of it is obviously magic.

Feel free to explain why Gentoo is so much better and how you know exactly what everything is doing because you personally read and approved every single line of source code before compiling it and you disassemble every update for every app before allowing it on your system.

I'll tell you in the morning how little I care. 😉

I think you need to sit down and think about it for a moment. If 100% of electrical energy eventually becomes heat in every electrical device then why would you ever need something specifically designed as a heater? You could just stick the telly on to get warm [:roll:]

What exactly do you think happens to it? Assuming we're not talking about high power lasers and super-mental sound systems who's energy output can leave the room and dissipate elsewhere (and even then that energy will be a small amount in comparison with the heat generated at the source), all electrical energy spent in the appliance becomes heat within that room - its the laws of physics.

I personally CAN stick my telly on and get warm in my small bedroom, but it takes a LONG time due to the very low power output (in comparison with the heat required to warm a room by much).

Personally I can hear my telly from other rooms in the house. And I can even see its flickering light from the street outside. Is my house outside the laws of physics then?

Personally I can hear my telly from other rooms in the house. And I can even see its flickering light from the street outside. Is my house outside the laws of physics then?

No, but the quantity of power required to project your TVs light and sound across the road is TINY in comparison with the heat it is producing to create that light/sound. Think about it, you can easily see the light a 100mW LED from 1/4 a mile away, they're in the region of ~30% thermally efficient so you're seeing about 30mW of "light energy" from far away, easily - the energy you "see" from the street will be fairly low. Your TV uses ~150ishW in total, the light and sound output will be in single figure %ages of its power output, the rest is heat. An even some of the light/sound that escapes heats the air/walls.

In much the same way as ~90% of the energy from a normal light bulb is heat rather than light. The majority of this light is trapped in the room and eventually becomes heat (if it didnt you'd only need to turn the light on for a fraction of a second and then the light would bounce around indefinitely!).

Personally I can hear my telly from other rooms in the house. And I can even see its flickering light from the street outside. Is my house outside the laws of physics then?

Erm.... that's how they move?? Electrical -> Magnetic -> Kinetic
And that kinetic only generates a tiny amount of heat (decent PC fans use fluid bearings so friction is minimal).

If 100% of electrical energy eventually becomes heat in every electrical device then why would you ever need something specifically designed as a heater? You could just stick the telly on to get warm

That light and sound that "escapes" though is an example of energy that isn't heat escaping from the system. No matter how small. So you can't argue that all the energy becomes heat within the room as that is demonstrably untrue.

That's not to say that a large proportion doesn't become heat. I've worked in enough hot offices to know that. But given a cold room and the option of a 1000 watt heater or a 1000 watt PC to warm me up then I'd choose the heater!

[size=1](or I'd go for the PC and simply knock one off to get warm)[/size]

aracer: yep I can hear my PC from the next room. The noise of the fans and hard drives is audible (even though I have low noise fans) and that very feint hum that lets you know a transformer is working somewhere nearby.

It's also visible from outside (even ignoring the monitor) as it has four bright blue LEDs on the case.

Strangely my work PC doesn't have bright blue LEDs on the case. Meanwhile we're talking here about rooms with sealed shut doors, closed windows here - can you really hear your PC through those?

Though to come back to your original question "Guess which one is considerably more efficient at heating a room?", even if you allow for some sound escaping from the room, the difference in efficiency between the two is miniscule. The difference in energy used between heating a room with computers or more conventional means is far less than the difference opening a window, or having poor insulation makes.

So you can't argue that all the energy becomes heat within the room as that is demonstrably untrue.

To an extent that you can could determine by thermometer in the room, it does. As I said from the start, a small minority may *escape* the room as sound or light but it is a TINY fraction of the total. The majority of the sound and light emitted by the object will turn into heat and join the heat created as a waste byproduct. To all intents and purposes a 100w lightbulb put as much heat into the room as a 100w heater, only the heater will have a lower surface temp but a higher area, this'll create more dispersed convection and MAY feel warmer in the near vicinity, however at a point miles from the source with no direct airflow you wont notice any difference at all.

The reason we have heaters and PCs instead of just PCs is because PCs arent a nice large surface area, or thermostatically controlled.

To relate this back to the argument, yes you could use the heat to reduce the heating bill if the heating is well controlled (demonstrated by the room my server is kept in (this draws about 150W continuously and the thermostatically controlled radiator rarely comes on whereas it used to be on with the rest of the rooms before the server was there) but often it isnt so people just open windows and waste that heat.

To relate this back to the argument

You lot obviously work at places which don't care that much about security.

Shame I can't demonstrate good spelling or punctuation at this time of the night! Look at the that last post of mine, what a mess!

Signing out, 4:15 is a stupid time to be posting here!

Right... my understanding of the "Conservation of Energy" is that it only applies within a closed and isolated system, of the kind that physics is fond of, but that don't actually exist in everyday life.

I've already pointed out that noise and light energy can leave the room. There are some others of course: radio (both wi-fi signal and RFI), data (electrical signals being sent back out the room on the network), static, vibration.

Any of these leaving the room should be sufficient to disprove aracer's pedant argument that heat is the only possible output from a PC and no other forms of energy can leave the room.

Getting back to Epicyclo's original (less pedantic, but equally silly) argument that turning off PCs in heated offices is a "big con":

Even if PCs were perfect little heaters, you still shouldn't leave them running to keep an empty office warm at night as it will use less power for a thermostatically-controlled heating system to kick in on a timer to warm the place up if required, before everyone arrives in the morning.

Erm...? My lap top has been on for 50days, 15hours & 10minutes. Does count?

Most offices spend more energy and cash on cooling than on heating. Internal gains from computers is big, even compared to people/lights/most other things.
Switching off a PC will save huge amount of energy, compared to most other steps you can take.
As ever, faffing and huffing about and splitting hairs over this distracts from the basic fact that we use and waste far too much energy, and that efficiency is king.
If I was the office manager, I would close down all the PC's myself daily, and hand anyone who didn't the bill for the wasted power for the 12-14 hours you are not using the PC.

****...PCs sound utter gash. Glad I have a Mac.

****...PCs sound utter gash. Glad I have a Mac.

Yep, fortunately Macs don't use any electrical power at all as they run solely on the owner's misplaced smugness.

Right... my understanding of the "Conservation of Energy" is that it only applies within a closed and isolated system, of the kind that physics is fond of, but that don't actually exist in everyday life.

Well no, actually its pretty universal, you just have to understand what you're considering a system etc, however as I've said a few times now - it depends what you're negating. The pedants argument that everything turns into heat in the room is technically incorrect due to the various wireless/light etc items that escape but is practically fairly accurate(and you like practical things as they exist in real life) as the percentage lost through those other forms is minimal in quantity, meaning it is generally safe to claim all power goes to heat air in the room and its internal surfaces.

Even if PCs were perfect little heaters, you still shouldn't leave them running to keep an empty office warm at night as it will use less power for a thermostatically-controlled heating system to kick in on a timer to warm the place up if required, before everyone arrives in the morning.

Agreed - you'll use less power overall if you allow the whole room to cool overnight and then warm it back up again than if you maintain its temp.

you'll use less power overall if you allow the whole room to cool overnight and then warm it back up again than if you maintain its temp.

And therein lies another issue - the buildings these things are housed in are so damn inefficient 90% of the time...

Suppose it helps reduce the need for cooling/AC with all the PCs creating heat, so thats a plus.

[i]Yep, fortunately Macs don't use any electrical power at all as they run solely on the owner's misplaced smugness. [/i]

bizarre. Mine certainly needs electricity.

Indeed a problem with the PC market is the scramble of all manufacturers to match products and specs means the wide variety of features and states of operation is a problem, where mac have so few products they get time to nail certain bits well, which is nice, got to hand it to them on that note.

The pedants argument that everything turns into heat in the room is technically incorrect...

As a pedant arguing against a fellow pedant (aracer) I take "technically incorrect" as a pedantic victory 🙂

..but is practically fairly accurate(and you like practical things as they exist in real life) as the percentage lost through those other forms is minimal in quantity,

Show me some figures. I demand figures. And possibly a chart. 😀

Like most electrical items, PCs have been designed with the assumption that it's ok to waste energy.
Does my head in - 2.5GHz processors...4Gb of RAM... cleverer than a very clever thing....and yet you can't even switch the thing off & on reliably. Massively gay.

Actually PCs put more effort than most electrical items into using less energy. Hence why we have ACPI, sleep states, SpeedStep, CoolNQuiet, etc

And no, most people don't struggle to turn them off and on reliably.

They're all great but they don't work reliably, hence the many complaints on this thread. Macs on the other hand....

If they're so great how on earth have we got to 1000W power supplies? I can check my emails on my phone, that's around 2W.

Fridges, cookers, microwaves....they are nowhere near as inefficent as a typical PC.

Graham - go do the calculations yourself, I can't be bothered 😆 Start with the fact that my server runs at about 90w actual power use, the two processors are rated at ~20W thermal output each and the two drives both sit at around 10W each, plus the graphics card IIRC rated around 2W also thats 62W in specified thermal output alone. The PSU works at about 75% efficiency so even if none of the other cards in the computer (graphics etc) produced heat you'd be up at 82W leaving about 8W in "other" output. Seeing as this is a server it has no speakers or wireless but some minute power will go down the ethernet to the router, the rest is lost as sound and friction in the fans and motherboard components. Since it's trapped in a cupboard not much of either leaves the room...

Admittedly the power factor of the PSU may put the meter reading out so all those figures could be only mildly indicative 😆

ooOOoo - Not sure you can judge the efficiency of a cooker, it's designed to produce heat so its "waste" is not really waste - only needs insulating to help it keep its heat in. Microwave - not sure how you'd measure the efficiency of that without seriously sophisticated kit and fridges - dont do hundreds of millions of instructions per second and display them to a screen, its a whole other level of complexity and design. Its like asking why cars are not as efficient at bikes.

In all honesty, most PC hardware will sleep / hibernate happily until you load software on that hasnt been tested with each possible OS/hardware combo.

As a pedant arguing against a fellow pedant (aracer) I take "technically incorrect" as a pedantic victory

There are some others of course: radio (both wi-fi signal and RFI)

Glad somebody else is doing why it's a rubbish argument to suggest it's fine to heat your room with a PC, thus leaving me to the pedantics.

coffeeking: I looked at your figures, but all I could think was "He keeps his server in an unventilated closet - man it must be cooking in there."

If they're so great how on earth have we got to 1000W power supplies?

That is the Maximum Load of the power supply, not what it is actually doing all the time it is running.

Somewhere around 200w is more typical:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/truth-pc-power-consumption,1707.html

It's simple for a microwave:
Input power - 1230W
Output power - 800W
Therefore efficiency = 65%

All of that will go into your food.

If you have your PC at 200W....it may be working flat out compressing a file.....or it may be sat idling for 30 mins while you go for lunch. If it's the 2nd then it's not doing anything of any use, so the efficiency is 0%.

No - I'm an engineer

That's just a pedant with a degree 🙂

Feel free to explain why Gentoo is so much better and how you know exactly what everything is doing because you personally read and approved every single line of source code before compiling it and you disassemble every update for every app before allowing it on your system.

I'll tell you in the morning how little I care. [;)]

Lol.

Sadly some of us are Devs that build this stuff for you all to consume for free if you like, which probably means that we have little life 🙂 (Even less now I teach too..)

Just amuses me to see people sing the praises of something like Vista, yet put up with so much crap. People have such low expectations from computers these days 😯

Bloody jinxed myself as I came home to find the power off, guess it had been windy again... Damn fickle powerlines.

Dev here too, so I'm well aware that even the*nix devs don't know everything that is going on in their PC.

"He keeps his server in an unventilated closet - man it must be cooking in there."

Its got a bit of ventilation at the front and rear in a thru-flow situation, but to all intents and purposes its cupboarded. It does obviously get warmer than it otherwise would but its my home server and I get to monitor temps and make sure none get excessive, so silence and invisibility are more important 🙂

ooOOoo - not sure about the design of microwave heating systems but going from the basic figures on the label yes that would be some basic assumptions that make sense. I am just unaware of whether all energy is absorbed by any contents or if any is dissipated internally. Obviously non is lost to the environment 🙂 But again, how do you measure the efficiency of a PC - what % energy use is "useful" ? Surely they're 100% useless when considered thermodynamically as at the end of the day they're designed for manipulating 1s and 0s on magnetic media which has to take very little power at all in itself. What amount of energy is "useful" when moving things on the screen? If my monitor works at 50W, and we know it loses 20W as immediate heat generation, how much of the 30W remaining is unwasted? Not sure I can answer that having not eaten since lunch.

Well if you ain't looking at it, that 30W is completely wasted, surely?! (hope you had a good lunch BTW) 🙂 If my PC is so clever then I want it use just enough energy to do the job...then use no energy when I don't want it to do anything. Come on geeks, surely it's simples?

What do you suggest?

I guess the PC could use the webcam to turn off the monitor when it reckons there is no one sat there looking at it - but what if you're just a bit further away or looking from the side?

Plus how much power does the webcam need?

Likewise the PC itself can't "use no energy" but still instantly respond when start typing. It has to tick over like an idling car.

But modern PCs already effectively "idle" and draw less power by slowing down ("throttling") the PC while it isn't doing any work.

Nothing that complex, perhaps just a switch like many other devices have, you could label it....I dunno...."on/off" 🙂

Yes they throttle, using RightMark mine is at 800MHz 90% of the time. But it's still using 80 Watts....what is it doing?!

I want it to tick over like an electric car, not a petrol car 8)

Right. well I too am a developer and understand the concept of context which the other devs mention. I typically have 5 - 10 shells on various machines tailing logs, editing files (Vim), running commands, commiting and checking out code etc..., Browser with 10+ tabs, mail, calendar, yammer, twhirl, adium, Word, Excel and then maybe some personal stuff like Spotify.

Turning off would mean probably 20 minutes lost per day but I have not been trying to hibernate so from tonight I've set hibernate to 1 hour of idle and will see how my shells react in the morning. Just needed a kick in the right direction so thanks to this thread 🙂