‘Power Saving Mode’ on Computer.

[Frances_iom]

Win98 generally starts up quite quickly - XP was the go away for a cup of coffee (or 2) before startup - hard drives usually fail at startup but the older harddrives in a controlled environment (UPS + airconditioned machine room) I've known to run continously for over 10 years - the key problems in a domestic environment, apart from the generally very poor thermal design of much consumer equipment, was dust blocking up what little air flow there was + in some locations power spikes tho a surge block generally could prevent these.

ETA rough rule of thumb - 1W continuous power drain = £1 per year at average domestic rates

[Dave2002]

ETA rough rule of thumb - 1W continuous power drain = £1 per year at average domestic rates

Pretty much what I calculated, though some may have higher tariff rates.

1 Watt continuous can almost be ignored. The sad thing about the iMac drain is that although it can be as low as 1 Watt, it quite often isn't. I suspect the same is true for PCs.

If it comes to it, I don't see why they can't be made with auto switch off when idle. Getting them back on again automatically could be slightly harder, though not impossible.
If the login/startup time is short enough that possibility could save a considerable amount of energy, particularly in some organisations which may have many such units.

Of course, in the grand scale of things it's possibly not very significant.

[Dave2002]

Re msg 12.

Turning Bluetooth off makes no difference. I turned it back on so that I can use the wireless mouse.

That means that the not so low power in standby can be because of several other factors, which are:

1. The hard drive
2. The cooling fan
3. The processor

Currently this machine has 7 obvious applications - which are:

Firefox, Google Chrome, iTunes, Mail, My Day, Terminal and Finder.

It has just gone down to flashing between 0 and 1 Watt when left to its own devices. That indicates that the higher power in standby was either due to:

a. One of the applications I killed before leaving the machine alone, or
b. Simply having too many applications loaded at the same time.

I'll send this post, then keep watching.

[Stanfordian]

All helpful replies to my initial question. Thank you all.

[Dave2002]

If you go to the Control Panel you should be able to change settings for how long it takes for the computer display to switch off ifc it's not being used. If you can't see where to do that search for 'power saving'.

It's probably sensible not to switch it off completely as it does save a fair bit of energy/electricity, especially if you have a laptop & are using it unplugged (although, as I've found to my cost, if you leave a laptop unplugged & in hibernation mode it's still using up battery power, & can eventually use it up & shut down completely).

I think most laptops should be able to last a few weeks if not plugged in. If they're powered down and the battery is charged they might still come on after a month (not if the battery is old though!), and if they're left on they should eventually go into a sleep/hibernation/low power mode. However, it may be necessary to plug them back in for a while if left for long, as mentioned above. This can be a nuisance if one takes a laptop out for a day without the power supply.

I don't know whether our OP is more interested in desktop machines or laptops.