Originally posted by: p0ntif
Originally posted by: mithrandir2001
When you start paying your own electrical bill, you might not want to keep all your machines running 24/7.
I pay my own electric bill, but still keep all my computers on 24/7 . . . would it really make a difference?
I didn;t know people still turned their computers off. weird.
Well, think about it: even if your PC was totally idle and you turned off all your other peripherals (monitor, printers, modems, speakers, scanners, etc.) it's still going to draw about 100 watts. And if you don't turn off your peripherals and/or you don't have all the power saving features set to max, you might be drawing 200-300 watts even when you aren't using your PC. In my area, a killowatt-hour costs about 13 cents. So an appliance drawing 100 watts of power will use a penny of electricity every 46 minutes. Sounds insignificant - and it really is - but what if you have 3-4 PCs running all the time? It does add up and it seems senseless just to spend the money for idling.
Of course, many people run their PCs 24/7 for the novelty effect. Makes it seem like their machines are in a mission-critical production environment. Geeky stuff. I mean, how many people REALLY need a couple of servers running 24/7 in their house if they don't have their own business?