Jim Redelfs wrote:
In article
,
" wrote:

How about doing a test on how much your computer is drawing.

I am guessing the hottest setup uses less than 200Watts
most of the time

in the winter the waste heat helps warm your home..........

Agreed.

I was amused to read the MagicJack thread where a couple of posters lamented
that it required leaving on the computer 24/7 - in this day and age of rising
utility costs! Horrors!

I haven't regularly shut down my computers for 15 years.

In my previous, electrically heated home, there were six, 100-watt
incandescent lamps illuminating the play room in the unfinished basement
directly beneath the living room upstairs.

I never chased after the kids, nagging them to turn off these lights EXCEPT
when it was COOLING season. The light bulbs made GREAT heaters (with some
incidental, "waste" light) that kept the living room floor nice and warm.

People that believe a running, but unused computer is particularly wasteful
can't see the forest for the trees. More than the equivalent power
consumption can be offset by removing one load of clothes from the dryer AS
SOON as they are dry rather than letting the machine's timer run to the end.
Hanging-out ONE load of laundry on a clothes line, rather than use a dryer,
will save more energy than is used by the idle running of a computer in its
lifetime.

Actually some might think that people who suggest leaving things on is
OK for whatever reason can't see the forest for the trees. What if
someone removed the clothes and turned off the computer?

Instead of just making up assertions like that think about what you
wrote. Can I suggest that either this hypothetical dryer would be using
monumental amounts of energy or the computer consumes the power of a
single LED for your assertion to be accurate. Gather some empirical
data and try to verify your assertion. Data I have collected shows that
a minimally used typical computer uses the same amount of energy in 15
hours as used by an electric dryer used to dry a typical load.