Computers left on all the time

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Roob

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At the office where I work, people leave their computers on all night, all weekend (even three day weekends), and it doesn't seem to bother them at all. I was at work yesterday, and about 20 computers were still on, and left on all weekend!

Despite the environmental, conservation aspects, about how much money should it cost on average to leave an average office computer on full power (no energy standby) with screen saver on per hour? Tell me that, and I'll do the math for the rest of it..

If one of you could just give me a very rough estimate, I'd really appreciate it.
 
Generally speaking, it's more energy efficient to keep the damn things running. They sink ALOT of power to start up, but once they get going it's not so bad... I've read that computers use less energy than a toaster.
 
The problems that really occur when you leave a computer on for 24/7 is:

Power surges: They can damage boards and Hard-Drives.

Hard-drive timeouts: If your hard-drive sticks you lose all your data, because it will no longer function.

Viruses: If a virus has managed to get onto a system, it can slowly work it's way through the files if it's left on.

External Security: If a machine is left on it can be targetted by people using trojan software. (Of course that's possibly the reason why they leave their computers on so as to work from home)

RAM errors: These are more notible if your systems have AGP cards that give have static memory addresses. The longer the RAM has a STATIC OS running on it (One not in use) the more likely the RAM will fail.

Sticking FANS: The fans used for the CPU and the Powerbox sucks alsorts of dust and hair into a system, and overtime this can clog the fan up. If this occurs your systems can become a potential fire risk.

Personally I'm not to worried that a system reboots, as I know that to leave it on, you can end up with Kernels that load and don't close down properly, and memory addresses that get used once and not re-alocated which can cause a systems lock up.
 
What a totally shocking waste of P.C's.

You should immediately load up Seti Driver and the CLI version of SETI onto all of those machines and join our team and help us get into the top 100 :D ...

http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/stats/team/team_126933.html

We are a friendly bunch of crunchers mainly UK based but always welcome overseas members. We have a little forum here:

http://forums.teamphoenixrising.net/index.php?s=

Why not pop over and you never know you may like what you see. In particular we have a rather well stocked Cantina filled with chilled beverages ;)
 
Originally posted by nitRAM
What a totally shocking waste of P.C's.

You should immediately load up Seti Driver and the CLI version of SETI onto all of those machines and join our team and help us get into the top 100 :D ...

http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/stats/team/team_126933.html

We are a friendly bunch of crunchers mainly UK based but always welcome overseas members. We have a little forum here:

http://forums.teamphoenixrising.net/index.php?s=

Why not pop over and you never know you may like what you see. In particular we have a rather well stocked Cantina filled with chilled beverages ;)
Click to expand...

Good idea, nitRAM
 
I would more strongly suggest you join the <A HREF="http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/cgi?cmd=team_lookup&name=sciforums.com">sciforums SETI team</A>, 'cause we need more help than them :)

I've been out of the SETI game for a while -- I've been doing distributed.net crunching (mainly because they have a better client). But I'm starting back up the SETI clients to see if my shiny new dual-800MHz PowerPC (well, 3 months old) can do a unit in less than 4 hours (I think it can).
 
Originally posted by nitRAM
What a totally shocking waste of P.C's.

You should immediately load up Seti Driver and the CLI version of SETI onto all of those machines and join our team and help us get into the top 100 :D ...

http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/stats/team/team_126933.html

We are a friendly bunch of crunchers mainly UK based but always welcome overseas members. We have a little forum here:

http://forums.teamphoenixrising.net/index.php?s=

Why not pop over and you never know you may like what you see. In particular we have a rather well stocked Cantina filled with chilled beverages ;)
Click to expand...
Subtle as ever, that's our nitRAM :D
 
nitRAM

This is where the post belongs. It would not have been moved had you posted in the correct forum to begin with.

I would also call notice to the fact that your original post has not been altered in anyway other than its location.

As such, I fail to see where you have a beef.
 
Originally posted by wet1
nitRAM

This is where the post belongs. It would not have been moved had you posted in the correct forum to begin with.

I would also call notice to the fact that your original post has not been altered in anyway other than its location.

As such, I fail to see where you have a beef.
Click to expand...
Hey, no talk of beef while Alan is around:
alan.gif


wet1, I think nitRAM was just being friendly/cheeky etc :)
 
Ahh, then call it a misunderstanding between cultures. I did not get the "cheeky" part but from context it sounded like a complaint. If I misunderstood then my apologies.
 
My comment was meant with no malice at all.

Added a winky which should have been there from the start !

All in good humour :)

I would hate to cause trouble on my first day !!!

[passing spoon to Riddler]
 
Originally posted by nitRAM
My comment was meant with no malice at all.

Added a winky which should have been there from the start !

All in good humour :)

I would hate to cause trouble on my first day !!!

[passing spoon to Riddler]
Click to expand...
/takes away spoon and puts it back in the naughty drawer...
 
you guys lost me somewhere along the line..

What I'd heard before is that if you leave a computer idle for more than a couple hours, it's more energy efficient to just turn it off. I mean starting it up doesn't burn the equivalent amount of energy to leaving it on all weekend or even all night does it? And even if it uses less energy than a toaster, don't toasters use a lot of energy, and people don't use them 24/7.
 
As i mentioned earlier on other threads in some other topic forum,

according to recent research of MIT any electronic devices (disregarding all the enviornmental degradation,wear and tear,frictional heatetc)will degrade if they are used continously.
(this was actually somewhere in Stryders thread about android dreaming etc)

bye!
 
I'm a big fan of seti@home, but in and of itself I don't think it's a reason for leaving a computer on, purely for environmental reasons. These days, all laptops and most desktops come with power management that lets you put the machine in standby mode when it's not being used.

Do I leave my work machine on? Well, yeah. But not just to run seti. Honest. The nature of my job is such that I may need to log into it from home, so it's pretty necessary that I leave it on.

Of course, the fact that I use linux means that it's actually save to leave it on for months on end. It occasionally has its disadvantages, though; I went without the euro symbol for months because I didn't want to go to the hassle of closing down X to make the relevent changes. If I used a buggy piece of crap that can't play minesweeper without bluescreening, I wouldn't have this problem.
 
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