| Put Your Computers to Sleep |
| Written by Hank Green | ||
| Friday, 17 November 2006 | ||
 Huge power savings could be realized if Microsoft simply included more robust power saving protocols with their operating system. According to figures in a Foreign Policy blog article,
such savings could be more than 50 billion kilowatt-hours, which would be
a savings of five to seven billion dollars and more than 45 million tons
of CO2 emissions eliminated.
Computer use continues to rise, with an estimated 660 million computers currently in use (and expected to double by 2010). With such a huge power demand, the cost of power consumption could become more expensive than the initial equipment cost. Allowing (or even requiring) idle computers to sleep, would be a great step toward reducing unnecessary costs and energy waste. via: Slashdot
Comments
(7)
It's up to the user
written by kballs , November 17, 2006
wake up
written by Jason , November 18, 2006
Shoot, just to "wake it up", just move your mouse. I have mine "go to sleep" after 10 minutes of idleness. This alone saves me on my electric bill.
Hibernate.
written by Rob , November 18, 2006
I never understand why hibernate isn't used more (on XP), just press shift and the Standby button changes to Hibernate. This effectivly shuts down the computer completely (Standby still uses some power) and it will restart in about thirty seconds.
It's useful if you don't intend to use the computer for a hour or so.
...
written by Su , November 19, 2006
No...TURN it OFF.
Well, yes, yes, of course, if you're making some calls, going out for a quick bite, doing some paperwork, then it can go to sleep. But leaving for 6 hours? Ending the day's work? Going away for some days? TURN it OFF. I always suspect the electric companies of spreading the myth that it's "bad" for a computer to be turned off. (*) When you got out, do you leave the water running? The lights on? The stove burning? The car running? I have had computers since circa 1986 and have never, ever, ever had a problem with turning mine off (sometimes often during the day.) I teach film production at a university. The prior teachers and the technician always left the (12!) work stations sunning 24/7 (as well as the 10 in the digital photo lab.) I insisted that the students shut down their station after working. We have never, ever had a problem with that, and even the technician now agrees that's it's fine and sensible. Does it "comfort" you to keep it running, that little friend who's always ready to wake up at the touch of your space bar? For the sake of the planet, TURN it OFF and go find something else that makes you feel loved and wanted.
...
written by Su , November 19, 2006
Oops...That (*) in my earlier email was to acknowledge that if you're on a network (as I am at school with my other computer) and they do random and frequent updates to internal systems stuff, of course you have to keep it in sleep/hibernation mode. But any other situation where you don't need to make your computer constantly accessible to a network...? Yep, OFF.
Hard for Some Corporate Customers
written by Ken , November 19, 2006
At one of the facilities where I work, we have been told to NOT turn our computers off. The reason is security, as all the anti-virus updates happen remotely; immediately when a new threat is identified. They listed several cases for particular worms where the user turned the computer off for a vacation, came back, and by the time they'd logged in after turning it on, it was infected; one time it brought down 300+ computers that all had to be pulled from the network and rebuilt (it's a high security place; any infected computer is removed, wiped completely, and rebuilt sofware-wise from scratch).
And yes, this issue is very, VERY frustrating.
...
written by Philip Proefrock , November 21, 2006
As with other issues with Microsoft, it's not a question of any kind of mandated behavior (either one way or the other), but a question of what the default behavior is. Yes, people will complain about it either way, because they prefer the alternative.
The point is that many, many people use the default setting. As with firewall settings, making the default setting the power saving option would have huge benefits, as most people would continue to use that setting. Rare, special cases (like the facility Ken describes above) could adjust settings to their preferred mode, but the default choice would be the greener option. a lot of this comes | ||
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If you want to wake up your machine remotely (to get files, use remote desktop, etc.) then you need to set up the machine to wake on magic packet... this process can be complex however. System vendors and net card vendors share the blame for this with Microsoft.