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New Computer Powered By PoE
BlakeCaldwell writes "BBC News is reporting about a new PC that's powered via a network cable rather than through a wall socket. The computer only requires 12 watts, lower than the upper limit of 15.4 watts that power over ethernet (PoE) can supply. FTA: 'PoE could end up being a universal power supply system as the cables and connectors for it are the same all over the world. By contrast power sockets and plugs differ by country.'"
From TFA, is 35 watts enough to run most laptops? I have a pig of a laptop (Sager 8890) that draws 120 watts.
...is that the current equipment out there is probably not actually delivering all of the wattage that the specification calls for. For example, a cable modem draws about 20 watts from the wall; even if it's delivering all of that to computers on the network with no losses... then it can only support one of these machines without drawing power from somewhere else.
I know you were kidding, but wireless power Does exist. T
"PoE could end up being a universal power supply system as the cables and connectors for it are the same all over the world."
Don't you need a hub or switch which supports PoE? Ethernet sockets may be the same all over the world, but how many PoE-enabled ethernet sockets have you seen on a day to day basis?
Idea is great ! But doesnot seems to be practical with Computer having moitor,dvd drive,cd drive....etc. Even If we use USB device which is drawing power from the PC and ultimately from the network which can only supply a limited power. So no of USB devices connecting to the computer will also be very limited. Theoretically if a computer consumes Microwatts it can get power over wireless LAN...So no more Cables!
I work for a public university. The people who are accountable for the equipment budget and the people who pay the light bill never talk.
I recommend flat panel monitors to people based on aesthetics and reliability. Power consumption (30-40 watts for an LCD, 150 for a CRT) is a non-issue with users, since the power bill is paid by a central campus entity and doesn't show up on our departmental budgets at all.
Actually, I don't know who pays the power bill. Maybe nobody!
sigs, as if you care.
easy, plug in more lan cards.
This signature is a waste of 42 characters
I work for a public university. The people who are accountable for the equipment budget and the people who pay the light bill never talk.
As a student, I worked at several of the computer labs at a large university (40,000 students). One late night when I was closing down, I thought to myself how silly it was to keep the CRT monitors powered on. This was before things automatically shut-off. So I went around to about 200 computers and shut-off the monitors. The next day I got in trouble by my manager...they didn't like my idea at all and didn't care about the heat or electricity savings. Apparently going around to turn them back on in the morning was too much work! I figure for about 6 years (before the advent of auto-shutoff CRTs and LCDs), this university ran > 1000 CRTs 24/7. Anybody care to guestimate how much electricity they could have saved over this time period?
You have a few options with PoE.
One thing that I really like is a lot of our resellers just purchase one large UPS for the PoE switches. If the power to the building goes out no need for remote devices to be plugged into indivual UPS's.
Mid-Span hubs, for those who don't want to upgrade their core switches install these between (mid-span) backbone switches and PoE devices. Usually having data and data+power ports. There are also PoE switches where all ports can be configured to support PoE.
Sean Milheim
iDREUS Corporation
I wonder with time whether this will have applications in the server room. Heats a major issue in most high capacity rack systems. The idea of not having to add more HVAC capacity and PDU access for every additional server is pretty cool. Plus no big issue with power hogs like CPU's and disk drives -as long as you keep the storage separate.
Nice for some applications (think of public phone charging points / laptop tables with power + wifi) but its only just wireless. It's more like plugless, you have to be on the pad (though I wonder if it could be scaled up to power electric cars for instance, think about an electric highway!)
Tesla had a more practicle wireless power solution in his tower. That crystal radio that you built as a child is wireless power in my book, even if it is only a trickle. (You're not a geek until you build a crystal radio. Hope we never switch over exclusively to digital)
I have heard rumours about someone living under a transmitter being prosecuted after he was found with a large number of coils in his roof, using them to provide heat, but i have my doubts about this one.
Philip
Signatures are broken
I actually have a small-scale solar power setup that powers my 17W server, our gateway router, my Palm charger, and a few other things all directly at 12 volts. The whole setup is 12V and we have "power busses" throughout out house for LED and stuff. They are two strips, one of copper, one of aluminum. The positive side is copper with female spade connectors. The negative side is aluminum with female bullet connectors. Sound safe? Yeah, it's pretty homebrew but I make pretty real-time graphs and it works well. I'd give you the URL but I haven't set it up to cache the generated graph and I don't want my poor 17W Epia 533 server to get slashdotted.
We are moving in the direction of car connectors, but we need too much diversity. Mant devices have panasonic connectors, but they're all different sizes! If companies standarized on one size of panasonic connector, I think everything would be great.
Swansea University Computer Science Department used to have a lab of Power Macintoshes. I am lead to believe the lab used to be an Amiga Lab. All the computers in that room were on a timeswitch which switched the power off for that room, I kid you not!
:)
We also used to have the Sparc SLC lab - I don't recall them ever powering the machines down and of course you could never power off the monitors separately since the motherboard was built into the screens.
(Still have one of those SLCs in my cupboard after the Computer Society took a bunch of the SLCs off the Uni's hands and then chucked them out a couple of years later.)
Of course they upgraded the whole lab to Solaris x86 and then to Suse where they have nodoubt forgotten to turn on power management anyway.
http://blog.nexusuk.org