Standby TVs Waste Electricity, How About ACPI?

twitter asks: "There's power management and there's standby, do you know the difference? The BBC is running story on how much electricity is wasted by TV standby mode. Thanks to the very useful EnergyStar program, I'd be the one in seven who thought they were saving electricity, with the standby button. I've been very happy with APM and hibernation on laptops, and want to do something similar with the desktops I use. What's the state of APM / ACPI Wake-on-LAN for Linux these days?" Slashdot touched on this issue, earlier in the week, but that article was more on TVs, not on computer power saving technologies.

Comments

Convenience

[kestasjk]

If it's more convenient we'll keep on wasting energy. The worst part is the standby circuits use practically no power compared to the transformers, which waste far more energy as heat than the standby circuitry uses. There should be a seperate battery power source powering the suspend-mode circuitry, which lets current into the transformer to provide the power needed for normal operation.. But of course this would cost extra, and consumers wouldn't pay extra for it even if it saved money on power bills in the long run.

Re: Convenience

[XanC]

Okay... Suppose it costs an extra $10 for the battery, smart circuitry to run it, design costs, etc etc. Suppose disabling the transformer for standby saves you 2W. Suppose it's on standby year-round. That's 8,760 hours, or 17.52 kWh. Say 8 cents per kWh, you're now saving $1.40 per year. It would take over seven years for you to make up the initial cost.

Re: Convenience

[Anonymous Coward]

And say there are 100 million machines with your reduced power consumption. How many power stations does that save, with all the polution not being belched into the air?

Now lets say we look at other devices and repeat the exercise. Oh look, poisonous emissions are going down, respitory health proplems are down, medical bills are down, medical insurance (for those countries with retarted health care like ours) are down (nah, maybe not this one).

Re: Convenience

[XanC]

Meanwhile we're filling the landfills and oceans with dinky little transformer-saving batteries.

Re: Convenience

[alienw]

Yes, and now you have hundreds of tons of batteries in landfills. Not to mention, it takes a hell of a lot more energy (as well as raw materials) to make a battery. Great idea. Maybe you should like, use your brain, next time.

Re: Convenience

[David Horn]

Ignoring that fact adding a battery would probably use more energy in the manufacturing that it could possibly save, the point of the parent author was energy saving in general, not saving you money.

I don't know how many TVs there are in the US, and I also suspect that shutting down the transformers in a large set will save more than 2W. I'm going to guess at 5W saved, over 500 million TVs. That's 44kWh per TV per year saved.

In every TV, that's 2x10^10kWh of energy saved across the whole of the US. Those are wild guesses, but they're probably in the ballpark. I don't want to come across as a troll, but it highlights the fact that you think solely about yourself rather than the bigger picture.

I'm not a tree-hugger, but you only have to look out of the window to see all the energy being wasted (PCs / TVs left on, cars sitting in traffic jams etc. etc.). Like it or not, unless we go nuclear we're going to have a serious energy problem in 50-100 years time. I think we need to start changing attitudes now.

Re: Convenience

[XanC]

I just got one of those Kill-a-Watts from ThinkGeek for Christmas. My 27" Sony TV uses ~100W while active (peaking at about 120 for a white screen). When it's "off", it uses 4W.

It's a fallacy to point out the total energy used by such TVs. I only control my TV. I control those 4W. Those 4W make no difference.

50-100 years before serious energy problems? Are you basing that on anything but intuition? There are plenty of energy alternatives out there, it just hasn't made economic sense to develop one. Once it does, we will.

Re: Convenience

[dgatwood]

Why use a battery? The standby circuitry in most devices could probably run for days on the charge in a $1.50 capacitor. Those tend to last a lot longer than a battery....

Re: Convenience

[David Horn]

Excuse me? You're saying that when we run out of power we'll invent a brand new source of energy out of desperation? Fusion is up in the air at the moment, nuclear will work if you ever get round the environmentalists, and wind and tidal power can provide about 5%.

It's a fallacy to point out the total energy used by such TVs. I only control my TV. I control those 4W. Those 4W make no difference.

The sheer arrogance of that statement astonishes me. Yes, on your own you won't make a difference, but when EVERYONE has your attitude you're in for one helluva shock when the oil and gas reserves run out. I also hate to break it to you but I bet my right hand that no new, reliable, large scale energy source is going to appear within my lifetime.

Re: Convenience

[david.given]

Okay... Suppose it costs an extra $10 for the battery, smart circuitry to run it, design costs, etc etc.

Or you could run the standby circuit using the battery, charger, etc that's already built in to your computer to run the CMOS clock...

Re:Convenience

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice idea (assuming that the battery is rechargeable and gets charged during normal operation) however the only thing you'd need to change is to take the transformer out of the standby picture. This is because batteries supply DC current and transformers require AC to operate. So, the battery runs the standby circuit (no transformer necessary). If the battery starts to get low, it could tell the standby circuit that it needs to be recharged, the standby circuit could then energize the charging circuit and replenish the battery. It's only somewhat "Rube Goldberg-ish" and probably *would* save power. Scale it up by 5 or 6 orders of magnitude (in terms of usage) and you might have something.

Re: Convenience

[alienw]

The standby circuitry in most devices could probably run for days on the charge in a $1.50 capacitor.

I'm an electrical engineer, and no, it can't. That's why there is a transformer. The real solution would be to get off your lazy ass and hit the power switch when you are done watching instead of turning the TV off with the remote. The other solution is to put in a very high-efficiency switching power supply, but those are very expensive.

Re: Convenience

[alienw]

It's a fallacy to point out the total energy used by such TVs.

It's not a fallacy. There isn't just one of those TVs, there are hundreds of millions of them. They all use energy. Legislative mandates for more efficient electronics would go a long way. Right now, efficiency is simply not a criterion the manufacturer even attempts to optimize when developing a power supply; cost is a much, much bigger factor. This obviously needs to change.

Are you basing that on anything but intuition?

Don't be childish. If you take money out of your bank account at an exponentially growing rate and never put any in, it will run out in only a few decades. Regardless of how much is in there initially. Considering that energy use is growing exponentially, 50 years would be the upper bound for a shortage. I'm willing to bet on 10-20 before energy prices go up a LOT. Not like going to $2.20 per gallon for gas instead of $1.20, more like $20.00 per gallon. If this is to be avoided, the exponential growth has to be stopped.

Re: Convenience

[icepick72]

So our planet can be seen from space as a million pinpoints of light. It will camouflage our earth against the stars from the eyes of onlookers and would-be invaders, allowing us enough time to build up our technology and arsenal against them. C'mon, doesn't anybody see the big picture anymore? The media grabs ahold of small environmental issue and look what happens ... Think people. THINK!

Re: Convenience

[EnglishDude]

The CMOS battery hasn't been rechargeable since the 486 era - they now use lithium button cells nowadays which isn't rechargeable. So no charger in the computer.

Re: Convenience

[XanC]

It's a fallacy to point out the total energy used by such TVs. I only control my TV. I control those 4W. Those 4W make no difference.

The sheer arrogance of that statement astonishes me. Yes, on your own you won't make a difference, but when EVERYONE has your attitude you're in for one helluva shock when the oil and gas reserves run out. I also hate to break it to you but I bet my right hand that no new, reliable, large scale energy source is going to appear within my lifetime.

Look, my workstation averages 230W. The 4W of my TV is less than 2% of that, and my workstation is only a tiny part of my overall energy usage. Even if there are 6 billion of me, and our standby TVs are increasing our energy usage by .09%, 4W each does not bring affect the timetable of your Armaggedon.

Re: Convenience

[dgatwood]

I guess I should have read the article title more carefully. The subject of ACPI, etc. left me the impression that this was about electronics in general. TVs are a huge exception. Picture tube heaters draw substantial amounts of current. There's not much that can be done about that short of dramatically increasing the power-on time for the TV. For a TV, most of the standby power consumption isn't caused by the trickle of current that the standby electronics draw. It's caused by keeping the tube warm so it doesn't take a long time before you see a picture.

For other electronics, I don't think I'm off by very far in my approximation here, though, assuming you ignore TVs, monitors, and other devices with tubes. I've used a 10,000 uF cap in a power supply for condenser mics once. It kept four of them running (at several mA each) for the better part of a minute. There are IR decoder chips that run at a tenth of a mA, and I'm sure that could be reduced further by using a more modern process to build the device. Okay, so that's more like a couple of hours on a single charge. Either way, it is still a really long time relative to the fraction of a second it takes to build up that charge, which was the point.

Re: Convenience

[Sigma 7]

Look, my workstation averages 230W.

Good. There aren't many workstations that average that amount.

 

The 4W of my TV is less than 2% of that, and my workstation is only a tiny part of my overall energy usage. Even if there are 6 billion of me, and our standby TVs are increasing our energy usage by .09%, 4W each does not bring affect the timetable of your Armaggedon.

If that is true, then:
- For every 50 TVs made, each "full on" for 8 hours a day and taking 200W a piece, you have to generate enough power to control 52 TVs. Multiply that so that you reach a more accurrate conception of America - scale it high enough, and you will encounter brownouts and/or blackouts.
- There are people that have been recently whapped with a massive energy bill. Those people will not be happy that all their idle items saps away power when they are supposedly off.
- This is still ignoring mal-configurations concerning power-saving devices. For example, there are plenty of computers shipped out with wake-on-modem, wake-on-lan or wake-on-something enabled. Instantly, your 4W workstation takes up 100KW, just because someone tried to call you. (In my case, the TV swings back into full-on after a blackout unless I physically press the power button.)

Even if it doesn't speed up Armageddeon (which is incorrect, as there are many coal burning power plants), it is money that comes out of your pocket - and mine as well since it adds to the demand on the power supply. Don't say that it isn't strained either, since it takes the population of a single state to cause a brownout since they can't live without air conditioning (to combat the temperature caused by a massive amount of air conditioning.)

FYI, Fridges, Washers, Dryers and other household appliances are rated for yearly energy use. There's no reason luxury items can't be tested in the same manner.

Re: Convenience

[ChrisDolan]

If that same battery serves another marketable purpose, then perhaps the cost can be justified.

For example, if the battery provides a short duration of RAM power, then a desktop computer could survive a power blink just like laptops can today. Have you ever been in an office when the power goes out and everyone except the laptop users cry out in anguish? Think of the battery as a mini, on-board UPS.

So instead of just saying that it takes 7 years to recoup the cost, the manufacturer can spin it as a market advantage.

Re: Convenience

[networkBoy]

The Xbox (as an example) runs for 10-12 hours on a 1 farad aerogel cap. Those cost about $5.00 in qty.

While your idea has merit, the tech still does not do low power well enough for a cap to replace a battery.
-nB

Re: Convenience

[tsa]

You have to take into account the amount of fossil fuels and other ingredients it takes to make an efficient electronic circuit. It is very well possible that it takes more resources building one than you will ever save using it.

Re: Convenience

[Anonymous Coward]

Instantly, your 4W workstation takes up 100KW...

WOW! I suspect it would instantly turn into a workstation-shaped cloud of plasma... ;-)

Re: Convenience

[0mni]

Energy use is rising exponentially, I somehow doubt that figure is used by anyone but environmentalists, the values are probably far less than that, although I do beleive that energy shortages may become apparent in 100 years, but guess what, they were right about it being farsical to point out any value on a whole, want to point a pretty value to be convincing?, use the value of new tvs made each year, and the amount that a change of design on those tvs would make, including the environmental cost of the batteries used to power an alternative idea (which is probably pretty horrible in terms of energy compared to come transformer wasteage), don't go spouting figures for saving power when most people don't buy a new tv every year they keep the same one for a long time. So you either use that figure or say there is a law to change it and you have to use a lot of resources for making new tvs. I agree that power waste is problem, but the fact is that most people can't afford the cost of electronics to fix this and yes people don't care. The loss in resources is great, but hell look at any light in your house and leaving it on (which many people do) will cover for a lot if not all of the standby power you are using, and that is if that is a flourescent bulb. There are problems with power waste, but start with the things that waste more than the things that are horrible in terms of wastage.

Re: Convenience

[hankwang]

The real solution would be to get off your lazy ass and hit the power switch when you are done watching instead of turning the TV off with the remote.

What I understand is that most American TVs don't have a hard power switch. I think the better solution is to have two separate transformers. A small one dimensioned for the standby circuitry only and a big one for the rest of the electronics, one that is switched off during standby. Losses in a transformer are for a large part independent of the load, so a 60 VA transformer could be 90% efficient at full rating (with 6 W loss), but it might still do 5 W loss when it is idle. (Numbers made up, but you can notice that transformers tend to be warm whether they are used or not)

Re: Convenience

[iangoldby]

It's a fallacy to point out the total energy used by such TVs. I only control my TV. I control those 4W. Those 4W make no difference.

Perhaps you've never heard of the Tragedy of the Commons? You should read about it.

Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia, concerning herders sharing a piece of common pasture:

The division of these components is unequal: the individual herder gains all of the advantage [of adding an extra animal], but the disadvantage is shared between all herders using the pasture. Consequently, for an individual herder..., the rational course of action is to add an extra animal. And another, and another. However, since all herders reach the same conclusion, overgrazing and degradation of the pasture is its long-term fate... [because] the gain is always greater to an individual than the distributed cost is.

Re:Convenience

[Anonymous Coward]

I just don't get it why many people see things often so black and white. Turning off is too hard and thinking stops right there.

Well, it's darn easy to get one of those timer switches + powerstrips/adapters with multiple sockets. Connect the equipment that don't need power (TV-set, non recording dvd-player, etc set-top boxes) all the time and program it turn off devices at least based on your habbits when not watching (like overnight, the time in work/school etc.). Connect devices losing clock and doing recording directly to power. Leave the timer easily accessible to be able to override toggle.

I've had this kind of setup past 4 years, the timer is leftover 20+ years old Theben Timer, still works perfectly and it takes only about stretch a day to reach the timer behind TV-set when back from work.

It's not a fancy high-tech solution but cut's standby waste easily 30-60% (estimate of hours not spent watching or turned on), which was enough for me to implement it. It's not huge savings here per person/family, but accumulated total for a nation it's quite a bit, like the BBC article claims.

Cheers,

:-) riku

ps. IMHO, it's oversimplification to claim that it does not matter trying to save excess power
              consumption if you have thermostatic control or have electrical heating. It assumes that
              all energy is equal in all ways which it isn't. The production price of power fluctuates and
              is very much expensive on peak hours. The heating peak need is usually overnight, AC:s
              cooling peak is afternoon etc. Lowering the peaks will lower the need of reserve kept. The
              idea of avoiding all unnecessary consumption pays off in many ways globally and nationally.

Re: Convenience

[Profane MuthaFucka]

As seen on one of those Demotivators posters:

"No single drop believes that it is responsible for the flood."

Re: Convenience

[alienw]

First, learn to write. Your comment is written extremely poorly, and almost not worth responding to.

don't go spouting figures for saving power when most people don't buy a new tv every year they keep the same one for a long time

So THAT's why millions of TVs are purchased per year. I don't know anyone whose TV is older than 10 years. They generally break long before that.

including the environmental cost of the batteries used to power an alternative idea

Did I say anything about batteries? There are lots of ways to make an efficient power supply.

I agree that power waste is problem, but the fact is that most people can't afford the cost of electronics to fix this and yes people don't care.

Exactly, this is why it is necessary to legally mandate that all new electronics follow energy use standards. There are already lots of similar laws. For example, all showerheads and faucets sold or used in new construction must have a flow rate of 2.5gpm or below.

The loss in resources is great, but hell look at any light in your house and leaving it on (which many people do) will cover for a lot if not all of the standby power you are using, and that is if that is a flourescent bulb.

So what, if you are already wasting lots of energy, it's OK to waste even more? Some bulletproof logic here.

There are problems with power waste, but start with the things that waste more than the things that are horrible in terms of wastage.

I'm not sure what the hell this sentence is supposed to mean, it's rather incoherent. We should really start with the things that are easy to fix, such as standby power use.

Re: Convenience

[alienw]

Actually, that's already how it's done, and that's exactly why a lot of power is wasted. A small, cheap transformer is usually a lot less efficient than a large one. A large transformer has thicker wire for the windings, so less resistive losses. It also has a higher-quality core, so there are fewer core losses. Of course, this is largely irrelevant, since the last time large transformers were used in consumer electronics was in the '70s. These days, almost all power supplies are switching types, whose efficiency is determined by their design and the quality of parts used. Since nobody really tries to optimize their efficiency, they can be extremely inefficient, and often very poorly designed. Most of them are made by Chinese companies who usually copy other companies' designs without even understanding how they work.

I think a law to mandate maximum standby power consumption (or, even better, incentives to minimize it as much as possible) can do quite a bit. Right now, it is simply not a factor in the design of equipment.

Re: Convenience

[alienw]

Actually, I don't think most modern TVs keep the tube warmed up. My TV takes the same time to turn on whether it's in standby mode or not. Nobody uses separate IR decoder chips, it's usually merged into the main ASIC and it's actually a microcontroller. If it's carefully optimized, it will draw about 0.3mA in sleep mode and a few milliamps when it runs. The real problem is the IR receiver (the ones I looked at draw 1-2mA), and more importantly the large relay which is supposed to switch on the main supply. It might be possible to solve this problem with something exotic, like a photo-triac, but it's definitely not simply a matter of putting in one capacitor.

Re:Convenience

[Anonymous Coward]

Better yet, why not get rid of standby circuits? People today are just way too fucking lazy and impatient anymore. If they're too lazy to get off of their fat6 asses and shut their fucking TV, computer, etc. completely off, they will have to pay larger electric bills and they will eventually go onto the fucking street. That way, natural selection will be at work, instead of catering to fat lazy fucktards that have no business being in the god-damned gene pool to begin with.

Re:Convenience

[tzanger]

You do realize that almost every single electronic device that consumes any appreciable amount of energy these days does not use a 60Hz transformer, right? Practically everything uses high-frequency magnetics, a very small input capacitor and some form of switchmode power supply.

Honestly you will find the largest savings with fine-tuning HVAC, office/home lighting and industrial process control. All this little penny-ass stuff you're complaining about is going after the 5%, when you could attack the 80% far easier and achieve much greater savings with much less effort. The other 15% would be the next step and then looking to save a couple hundred miliwatts here and there.

Re: Convenience

[tzanger]

The other solution is to put in a very high-efficiency switching power supply, but those are very expensive.

If you're an EE, you're not a very good one.

There are switchers in TVs (most modern televisions run practically everything off of a small switcher and a larger switcher running all secondary supplies off of the flyback circuit) -- There hasn't ever been a linear supply in a PC power supply (even the old XTs ran switchers) and your DVD player, receiver, UPS... all switchers. Your basic switcher efficiency these days starts at about 80% under moderate load, with most achieving upward of 95% without even doing careful design. Now yes, while idle, they often drop to ~70% even when pulse-dropping but let's be honest here... 70% efficiency on pulling a hundred miliamps is not exactly killing the grid, nor is it adding up to any appreciable amount when multiplied by a million units, especially not compared to the HVAC and lighting requirements of any urban business centre, or the electrical requirements of even a couple of industrial processes.

To get back on topic, switchmode supplies are dirt cheap. The magnetics are smaller and lighter and cheaper than 60Hz transformers, the controllers are oftentimes cheaper than the ancient 78xx series regulators, the run cooler which means you save money on heat dissipation, you save weight because you don't need the same heat sinks... They are far cheaper than any old linear circuit for any appreciable load. Now you do run into higher output harmonic content with a switchmode power supply but simple filters and efficient switch design (already built in to most switchmode controller circuitry) minimize these effects, and linear supplies generate much different, and much more difficult to deal with input harmonic distortion.

In fact the benefits of switchers over linear supplies is so great that it's actually illegal to power any commercial equipment with linear supplies in the EU. You simply cannot achieve CE approval with a linear power supply due to the input current waveform distortion. Switchers spread out the input current wave over more of the voltage waveform, saving the power company from having to supply 3x-4x the current over a very narrow part of the voltage waveform.

Switchers are cheap. Hell even expensive switchmode supplies are cheap compared to the magnetics, semiconductors and heatsinking required for the equivalent power level linear supply, and that's not including weight and shipping considerations. I can't even think of a wall wart I have for a doo-dad in my house that doesn't use a switcher over a linear supply. Honestly, this is a non-argument, and yet I've managed to babble on about it for what, four paragraphs? :-)

Re: Convenience

[Eccles]

And say there are 100 million machines with your reduced power consumption. How many power stations does that save, with all the polution not being belched into the air?

For commodity items, there's a reasonably high correlation between cost and power usage. For items of a similar nature, we can extend that to general environmental impact. Creating those $10 transformers requires the use of energy, not to mention disposal costs. It may be that the energy required to create them, on average, is greater than the energy saved in using them. That's probably especially true now, with HDTV sets, LCDs, etc. slowly replacing CRTs.

My minivan gets pretty lousy mileage. But given the low number of miles I do regularly, it doesn't pay environmentally to replace it with something more efficient, given the energy and materials that would be used in constructing the economy vehicle I would get.

Re: Convenience

[TClevenger]

Don't you think they could parallel a tiny high-efficiency switching power supply into the inputs, just to supply the standby circuitry? It only needs milliwatts or less; I'd think there might even be an off-the-shelf chip that could do it in one or two parts.

Re: Convenience

[dgatwood]

But you only need to hit the relay once, and only for a moment. Then, you just do a feedback loop off the transformer to keep the thing powered. You use a transistor to close a soft contact between a second storage cap and the relay. The relay closes, the transformer powers up, which then diverts power back to charge the cap and power the relay, and you have a second switching transistor to break the feedback to close the relay when you switch back to standby.

As for the IR receiver, Sharp electronics has full IrDA transceivers that only draw 0.1 mA, and that's the maximum drain, which presumably is when it is transmitting, not receiving. It can transmit remote control codes up to 5m at that level of power. Based on that, I would think that if an IR receiver draws 1mA, it's due to a cost/power tradeoff in part selection rather than a fundamental limitation of the technology.

Re: Convenience

[alienw]

It would take an awfully large capacitor to provide a reasonable standby time. The Sharp converters draw 100mA when transmitting, the 0.1mA figure is for the "shutdown mode". This makes sense, since an ordinary LED requires about 5mA to be visible and an IR LED needs to be very high-intensity.

Even assuming a power draw of 0.5mA (unrealistically low, in my opinion), capacitors would not provide enough runtime with simple circuitry. Let's say you put in a 1F supercap, and let's suppose the standby circuitry can run in a range from 5V to 2V. You have a 3V window where stuff works. The dv/dt for a 1F cap discharged at a constant 500uA is 500uV/s (I = C dv/dt, so dv/dt = I/C). This means you are in the 3V window for 6000 seconds, or less than 2 hours. Even if you use a switching converter, you will still get maybe 4 hours of standby. Using a higher voltage is not an option, since inexpensive supercaps don't come in anything more than 5V or so.

Also, it's impossible to turn on a relay with a capacitor the way you describe. Relays are far too slow for a capacitor of a reasonable size to energize one for the necessary length of time to connect the contacts and allow the main power supply to start up. A solid state device like a triac would be required.

Software suspend: ACPI/APM independent

[TeknoHog]

Linux has software suspend in the kernel. It's the same as hibernation in Windows. Memory contents are saved to swap, and when you boot the same kernel again, it picks up where it left off. It's independent of APM/ACPI and you can use it on any Linux machine.

While the vanilla version works basically, Suspend2 is a more complete implementation. I use it on my laptop regularly.

Re:Software suspend: ACPI/APM independent

[iangoldby]

That sounds useful, and is something I wasn't aware of.

My big question though is whether it will bring my KDE desktop up faster than a plain vanilla boot? Does software suspend get round all that time-consuming service startup (and all the rest of the stuff that goes on while those messages are scrolling up the console)?

Thanks for the inforamtion.

Re:Software suspend: ACPI/APM independent

[TeknoHog]

My big question though is whether it will bring my KDE desktop up faster than a plain vanilla boot? Does software suspend get round all that time-consuming service startup (and all the rest of the stuff that goes on while those messages are scrolling up the console)?

Yes. When you boot again, only the kernel is booted, which takes about two seconds or so. Then instead of init (all those startup services), it picks up the RAM image from the disk (takes a few seconds on my 512MB machine).

Re:Software suspend: ACPI/APM independent

[jonored]

The simple answer: Yes. The system never shuts down, it just saves the current state of the machine to disk and stops - when it comes back, it comes back with every process that it stopped with still running, almost like nothing happened. The long answer: stuff that was talking to the outside world will probably have it's open connections dropped, and the network card might need to be restarted or something. Nothing big, nothing that should take much time. Not sure how long it takes to bring the system back, though.

Re:Software suspend: ACPI/APM independent

[Anonymous Coward]

A couple services may have to be restarted after boot with suspend2, but it's incredibly easy and convenient to do so. I googled for a howto and had it functioning perfectly on my laptop within 15 minutes. Plus, ndiswrapper gets along with it ok, so when I start back up my wifi connection's still good.

Re:Software suspend: ACPI/APM independent

[NetRAVEN5000]

I've never used Linux's "suspend" feature, but the way I understand it, when you suspend it loads a direct copy of what's in memory to swap - and then when you boot up again it loads this "image" back into memory.

Sounds to me like it doesn't even need to start up all those daemons and stuff again - it just completely replaces what's in memory, and you keep going from where you left off.

The only question I have about it (and the reason I've never tried it) is what happens when you actually shut down or reboot the computer - does Linux know that there's no image for it to "resume" from? I mostly run Linux, but I dual-boot to a WinXP partition for games.

Re:Software suspend: ACPI/APM independent

[TheRaven64]

takes a few seconds on my 512MB machine

Most laptop hard drives are hard pressed to give a 25MB/s sustained read rate. I am not sure exactly how the Linux implementation exists, but you have basically two choices:

1. You flush everything from user-space RAM to swap. When you are back up, you page things in as required. This is fast to sleep (most of the data is on disk already, just flush dirty pages), fast to wake up (just demand-page everything), but will slow the machine down a lot as all of your applications are now generating large numbers of page faults.
2. You write the entire contents of RAM to a disk file. This wastes as much disk space as you have RAM (the contents of RAM is going to be in your swap space as well as in your suspend-to-disk file), and can take a long time to sleep and wake. Worst, the amount of time taken is proportional to the amount of RAM you have. Most laptop users try to have as much RAM as possible, since spare RAM acts as disk cache and reducing disk accesses is a really good way of prolonging battery life.

It sounds like Linux uses the second one, which is far from ideal (oh, it also eliminates encrypted swap as an effective security measure - another big drawback for mobile users). It is particularly bad for laptops, since the slow speed of laptop hard disks makes the suspend / resume time a lot longer than on a comparable desktop. Now, when Flash prices drop to the point that allows putting a suspend file in Flash, then this might suddenly become interesting. Particularly if it were done above the OS layer so it could take the kernel and machine state with it.

Re:Software suspend: ACPI/APM independent

[arodland]

This wastes as much disk space as you have RAM (the contents of RAM is going to be in your swap space as well as in your suspend-to-disk file)

This bit doesn't make any sense. First off, by default (and as the only option with the code in mainline), the swap is the suspend file. There isn't anything wasted or stored twice, because the only pages to be stored are the important ones; not unused pages, and not pages that are already backed by the disk (including swap). So it's mostly equivalent to option 2. Sure, it does reload all of those pages at boot time, but I figure it's mostly for simplicity. And it really does only take a few seconds.

Re:Software suspend: ACPI/APM independent

[TeknoHog]

The only question I have about it (and the reason I've never tried it) is what happens when you actually shut down or reboot the computer - does Linux know that there's no image for it to "resume" from?

Yes, it does. If you look at Suspend2's details, you'll find that it's very well thought of, just like the rest of Linux.

IMHO, you should try things like this just for the heck of it. It's the hacker/tinkerer spirit. If you use journaled filesystems, there's very little risk of data loss in case of crashes.

Re:Software suspend: ACPI/APM independent

[NetRAVEN5000]

"IMHO, you should try things like this just for the heck of it. It's the hacker/tinkerer spirit. If you use journaled filesystems, there's very little risk of data loss in case of crashes."

Normally I do, but I just don't want to be stuck with Linux not booting anymore at a time when I don't have much time to sit down and figure those sorts of things out.

ACPI?

[Anonymous Coward]

Advanced Configuration and Power Interface

Actually

[eclectro]

ACPI only uses your power until you are hacked, then somebody else has the power.

Re:Actually

[nybo]

Hey... That one's easy to overcome:
Just *don't* get hacked... d8^)

-Nybo

Re:Actually

[eclectro]

Yeah, I'm in the process of pulling out my soldering iron to unsolder the write pin to my bios. =:)

WOL

[SillyNickName4me]

WakeOnLan is basicly a matter of sending a 'magic packet' to the MAC address of the comuter you want to wake up. There is no need ofr the OS on that machine to actually support that functionality (except for there being a few cards around that require WOL to be re-enabled after each boot).

Sending the 'magic packet' is not difficult, and there is a variety of tools that can do this, including a ready made perl script, on a gentoo system, type 'emerge wakeonlan'. I bet it is available with most other distributions as well.

Re:WOL

[Tony Hoyle]

The BIOS must though - and a lot don't do so, even those which have WOL supporting chipsets on the motherboard.

Re:WOL

[SillyNickName4me]

The bios has to support it, the nic has to support it and it may require a cable between your mobo and nic in order to work..

When your firmware and hardware don't support this correctly then obviously it is not going to work, regardless of what OS you are trying to boot..

The question I replied to was asking specifically about using this with Linux, that more or less implies that the hardware being used itself is fully capable. My answer was to point out that Linux has nothing to do with the matter in virtually all cases.

Re:WOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Lies. Every Mac built in the last 10 years supports wake-on-LAN, and they have no BIOS. Open Firmware, yes, but no BIOS.

Re:WOL

[fm6]

You're kind of missing the point. Of course support for WOL has to be in the LAN card. But that support isn't much use if the LAN card isn't getting power. So using WOL expends a small amount of power even when the system is off, just as the instant-on feature of TV sets does.

Re:WOL

[SillyNickName4me]

You're kind of missing the point. Of course support for WOL has to be in the LAN card. But that support isn't much use if the LAN card isn't getting power. So using WOL expends a small amount of power even when the system is off, just as the instant-on feature of TV sets does.

Without power it is not going to work at all, seems rather obvious really. A powered off system with wake on lan enabled is going to come a lot closer to the 1 watt initiative of EPA then almost any TV on standby mode however. Indeed a PC in that mode uses very little power, if you had read the article we are supposedly discussing, you'd have seen that most TVs in standby mode use a substantial amount of power.

At any rate, this was not the question the grantparent asked, rather, the question was about WOL working with Linux. I don't see what point I missed in answering that question really, please enlighten me how your comment is in any way relevant to the grantparent and my post.

Re:WOL

[ivan256]

But that's *not* how ACPI LAN power control works...

On Intel boards with their advanced ACPI (yes, redundant... their terminology) controlers (BMCs), there's a 16Mhz ARM7 computer running even when your machine's power is off. It has a back-door connection to the intel ethernet chip, and can process ACPI packets to do just about anything you could do to your machine if you were standing in front of it, but over the network. It sits between the front panel buttons and the chipset, so it can 'push' any of those, whether your PC is on or off.

Re:WOL

[SillyNickName4me]

What you describe is how exactly the system can be turned on upon receiving a network packet. Of course you can do a bit more with this then just receiving a 'wake up call'. I f you can respond to that and given you have access to the correct registers, you can do a lot in response to any specific network packet.

That there needs to be some intelligence for actually responding to such a packet seems somewhat obvious to me. What kind of 'intelligence' this is I never mentioned, it is relevant to the main article because it is going to say something about power consumption (tho according to my measurements, the power use of wake on lan is pretty low), it however has nothing to do with the post I replied to which asked about using WOL with Linux.

At any rate, I have implemented WOL on a wide variety of hardware, and the only cases where the OS matters at all are those where the OS needs to re-enable WOL after boot. Those are the exception and not the rule. Provided you can boot it at all on your machine and your machine properly supports wake on lan, you could power it up and have it boot DOS 2.0 or such with wake on lan no problem.

Re:WOL

[ivan256]

Standard WOL, however, uses very little power in comparison to IPMI, which is why I made the distinction.

it however has nothing to do with the post I replied to which asked about using WOL with Linux.

Your post was at the top level, and not a reply to anything. Perhaps that is the source of the confusion.

Re:WOL

[SillyNickName4me]

Ok, sorry about the confusion, its indeed at the top level, and specifically answers the 'does wol work with linux' question being put up. That said, your post is informative in itself of course and maybe more an answer to the article then to my post about this wol + linux thiny? Ah well, it doesn't really matter anyway.

Heat

[Eightyford]

It's important to remember that you don't need to worry about wasted energy if you live in a cold location and use electric heat.

Re:Heat

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Maybe it is different in certain countries that heavily tax petroleum products, but in many places, using electricity is not the cheapest way to heat, so it would be a bit of a waste.

I really don't think it is a huge deal, each TV might draw 5W on standby. It varies by TV, so check your manual. All my manuals for line-powered electronic products specify standby power and it's not much. There are plenty of good flourescent bulbs with higher frequency ballasts and a "warm" looking color output such that switching to flourescent should be a more important goal, there are now scarce excuses not to and so many reasons to do so.

Re:Heat

[general_re]

You don't really need to worry about "wasted energy" no matter where you are. I find having my computers running 24/7 to be convenient for me. The power used keeping them on 24/7 is not "waste", it's the price of convenience.

Re:Heat

[Anonymous Coward]

Bravo. Finally someone who gets it.

Re:Heat

[Krach42]

Yes, actually, it never really gets cold enough here in Seattle that I have to use my electric heater in the apartment.

I have my computers on 24/7 for convenience, and I actually have to keep my window open just so my apartment doesn't get too hot.

Thus, by mere desire for convenience, I generate the heat I need to survive comfortably anyways, and I've never turned on the heater, which is electric, and would cost me more money to run regardless of if I were turning my computers off or not.

Compact Flourescent

[the eric conspiracy]

You will save far more energy by investing in some compact flourescent light bulbs.

Re:Compact Flourescent

[zcat_NZ]

Agreed. I have a friend who religiously turns his computer off (speakers, monitor and printer individually) to save power. It's an old 300MHZ Compaq so it's not even using that much power running..

His house is fitted throughout with 100W incandecent lightbulbs. I haven't checked, but I suspect he also leaves his TV and amp on standby.

Re:Compact Flourescent

[Trogre]

I think compact fluorescents are now a no-brainer for anyone with any interest in power management.

If someone's looking at ACPI or Standby appliances you can pretty much guarantee they've already got insulated dwellings, efficient vehicles and compact fluorescents bulbs.

Just try to avoid 'Elite' branded ones. I've had three die after six months use in different sockets.

Re:Compact Flourescent

[6*7]

What a rediculous statement. Insulating a house and efficient vehicles are big things and cost losts of money.

Implementing lighting with efficient lightbulbs or just turning of unused equipment is extremly easy (though simply replacing all oldstyle wolfram filament is silly). These are things you can do yourself whever you want, it shows a mentatilty shift and even though a person might have a SUV it might think about when and how to use it. When the time comes around to replace the car they might choose the efficient type.

Re:Compact Flourescent

[brunes69]

I haven't checked, but I suspect he also leaves his TV and amp on standby.

I don't know what model TV you have, but if I unplug mine to get it out of standby, I lose all the programmed in channels and settings. Next time I plug it back in I have to reprogram it all. Same with my reciever.

No thanks, it's worth the $1 a month.

Re:Compact Flourescent

[BenjyD]

Most modern TVs store that data in non-volatile storage these days, I think.

ACPI ? What ACPI ?

[Hymer]

...servers run 24x365.25 no need for ACPI here.
Save power somwhere else...

Re:ACPI ? What ACPI ?

[dmiller]

Even if your systems are on all the time, you can use CPU speed throttling to save some watts - I bet most 24x7 servers are not at full capacity all the time. Packages exist for several operating systems (OpenBSD and Linux at least) to dynamically throttle CPU clock speed, thereby reducing power consumption. It isn't likely to be a huge saving, but even a couple of % across a number of machines can add up to quite a saving.

Re:ACPI ? What ACPI ?

[Entropius]

It's quite a large savings. My computer (the entire system, measured by /proc/acpi, including LCD panel) uses 50W at 2.2 GHz and 20-25W at 800 MHz.

Re:ACPI ? What ACPI ?

[ROBOKATZ]

Well if you're going to be a smartass about it might as well say 365.2425..

Re:ACPI ? What ACPI ?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I'm not sure if desktop systems will necessarily benefit to such a degree, servers probably to less of a degree, but dynamically cutting CPU clock on a server farm could net a significant savings.

At least using notebook systems can have other benefits, two of them are mobility and sound output.

Re:ACPI ? What ACPI ?

[modecx]

Of course the savings from more efficient computers in a server farm environment will be as much, if not more from reduced air conditioning loads alone than it will be from power consumed by the computer... That's a good thing--two birds with one stone, so to say. Likewise for large office buildings.

Re:ACPI ? What ACPI ?

[arivanov]

Same here. But they have both ACPI and CPU frequency scaling (aka centrino, powernow, longrun, longhaul) enabled.

The reasons are fairly simple.

• Keeping the servers cooler decreases the electricity bill by up to 20% from ACPI and up to 75% from cpufreq for an average Pentium/Xeon based corporate install when idle. Athlon/Opteron numbers are comparable. This also decreases airconditioner wear and tear.
• If your servers are well designed and have temperature controlled fans (all IBMs and Compaqs fall in this category) this increases fan MTBF by up to 2 times. Most importantly if a fan fails the server usually is cold enough to send out a clean alert and even work until you get around to replace it.
• Your capacitor deterioration rate (they are the first thing to blow in a server nowdays) is considerably less which means that your overall server MTBF goes up and reliability increases considerably

There is only one case where power management is unnecessary. It is if you are running a computational load which requires your servers to work 365x24x7 flat out. Running without ACPI and cpufreq (if supported) for an average corporate or ISP load is plain stupid. It results in a less reliable server installation.

By the way, do not worry, 99.99 of the server sysadmins out there join you in this stupidity. In fact I did 7 years ago when I knew less about server administration.

Re:ACPI ? What ACPI ?

[Hymer]

24x365.25 is less smartass than 24x7x365.
My servers do usually not live for more than 5 years so using higher precision will not change anything.

Re:ACPI ? What ACPI ?

[Hymer]

My SAN uses more power than all my servers together...
MTBF is irrelevant if the MTBF is much higher than the expected lifetime of the server... All our server failures have either been after max. 1/2 year (production fault) or after the end of the expected lifetime (wich is 5 years for a PC server). I do however have running servers (IBM PCServer 325, Compaq ProLiant 2500 and some DEC) wich are over 10 years old... but they don't do servers that way any longer, do they ?
Temperature of a transistor decreses whenever a transistor does not do any work, even without power throttlening, ACPI, etc...

Re:ACPI ? What ACPI ?

[arivanov]

MTBF is MEAN TIME BEFORE FAILURE not Time before guaranteed failure. It is the Expected Value of your failure distribution. By increasing your MTBF, you are decreasing the probability of failure within your estimated installation lifetime. As a result over your projected installation lifetime the overall number of failures and overall maintenance expenditure decreases. When managing 100+ servers it is guaranteed to have some failures due to normal wear and tear even during the warranty period. Not trying to decrease their rate is a prime case of masohism.

As far as your experience is concerned - 5 years is a long shot for the systems that roll off the production line today. In fact very few of them will survive that length of time without power management. Out of the 1U systems I have dealt with lately not a single one. This was not the case with most old servers from 5+ years ago as they were designed for OSes which did not have power management at the time. As a result their cooling system capacity is way over what they actually need. Just opening a Proliant G1, G2 and G3 side by side is a good enough example. The cooling capacity in them does not increase while the heat emission from the CPU increases more then 4 times.

Re:ACPI ? What ACPI ?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the name of the cpu throttling program? I can't find a package for it on my OpenBSD 3.8 machine. "cd /usr/ports; make search key=throt" doesn't return anything relevent. Nor does keyword cpu or power.
I'd be most interested in using such a tool on my laptop until ACPI is finally available...

Re:ACPI ? What ACPI ?

[jawtheshark]

Yes, I'd like to know too. I only know of one way:

sysctl -w hw.setperf=somenumber

This is only supported by very few CPU's and the ones I own don't seem to support it (a P-III 800MHz and a AMD64). Cool 'n Quiet doesn't seem to be supported at all. I'm not complaining, the OpenBSD team probably has other priorities, and perhaps they don't have access to the Cool 'n Quiet specs or so.

I hope for support in one of the following releases.

Laptops?

[Oldsmobile]

I think laptops use way less energy than desktops. So perhaps, in the future, with energy prices going up (as they invetably will), laptops and equialent systems (Mac Mini, anyone?) will prevail.

I think the situation here is, that we have to choose, either it is heavy investment in nuclear power and uranium enrichment and excavation, or we scale back our lifestyles radically.

So, anyone cheering for the "eat-dry-fish-and-porrige-all-the-time-while-livin g-off-the-land" -alternative?

No?

Nuclear power it is!

Now I see...

[Onuma]

I've got a Sharp TV at home. When it's on, you hear that distinct oscillation noise that all CRTs make when they're on. As soon as I hit the "power" button however, the sucker is still making that noise. I had assumed it was a standby feature to warm the tube up faster, but if it could be using up to 2/3 of its normal energy I'm just going to cut its juice from now on. At least my ooooold 19" Panasonic TV turns completely off when I hit the button. Old Reliable :) Now that I sit and think about it, I burn a lot of energy when I'm back in the States...Cell Phone/PSP charging, sound system, if I forget to turn off the lights, broadband modem, router. I leave my computer(s) on, with standby features like monitors off and all that jazz. I wonder just how much power all that uses? I'll do an experiment with that for a month and see how much money I can save once I return home.

Re:Now I see...

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear that most of the electricity in the USA comes from coal powerplants, so even if you don't save much money, you could save mother nature from some rather nasty emissions such as carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and uranium.

Re:Now I see...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your monitor does not use anywhere near 2/3 of normal power. Check your manual or download it from the internet. Standyby power consumption will be in there.

As for the standby power load of your house, just go to your electricity meter and time how fast the disc spins. It should have an equation for conversion into kWh written next to it.

mnb Re:Heat

[Anonymous Coward]

Cost wise - as of this winter here in Ohio, anything less than a 93% efficient gas furnace is trumped by the pure 100% goodness of electricity.

Last year fuel oil fell.

RAID & Power Management

[Mendy]

Does anyone know if there are any implementations of RAID which use power management? I haven't seen settings mentioned in the bios of any cards I've looked and I've got a feeling that the drives aren't being powered down. Would Linux's software RAID be better for this?

Re:RAID & Power Management

[jimmyhat3939]

I use software RAID for just this reason. I use hdparm to make the drives spin down and it works perfectly. Just make sure you don't have anything on the RAID that the OS needs (/usr /etc /var) or it will spin the drives up again and again.

Layer 2 Access Required [Security?!?]

[mosel-saar-ruwer]

Sending the 'magic packet' is not difficult, and there is a variety of tools that can do this, including a ready made perl script, on a gentoo system, type 'emerge wakeonlan'.

The packet in question requires access to Layer 2 of the OSDI model, i.e. the ability to send raw ethernet packets. By way of an example, the Java security model traditionally forbade this sort of thing [Java doesn't even let you send ICMP packets at Layer 3, so there's no such thing as "PING" or "TRACERT" in Java].

If there is a vanilla plain-jane non-souped-up installation of a Perl interpreter that allows you access to Layer 2, then it's going against the Java security model.

Of course, obviously Perl != Java, but it's something to think about.

Along those lines, you might consider this recent discussion at /.:

Anonymous Coward: Is there a way for a java app to trap keypresses when the java app is out of focus, without using a native interface?

AKAImBatman: No. This is a huge security issue, and is unlikely to ever be included in Java...

http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=175084&c id=14560073

Just like keyboard sniffing, if a Perl app has the ability to send a packet at Layer 2, then it's easy to surmise that it might be able to receive a packet at Layer 2, and from that it's easy to fear that it might be able to receive all packets at Layer 2, i.e. it's not so difficult to imagine that a Perl app could function as an ethernet sniffer.

Anyway, just something to think about.

Re:Layer 2 Access Required [Security?!?]

[alienw]

There is a good reason why Java never became particularly popular, and this is it. It has an absolutely idiotic security model, in that it prohibits you from doing "dangerous" or "nonportable" things. Where "dangerous" or "nonportable" actually means "useful".

With the appropriate privileges, Perl (or any other native application) can send any type of packets, layer 2 or above (possibly even layer 1). A programming language is NOT the place to impose security constraints. That's what the operating system is for.

Re:Layer 2 Access Required [Security?!?]

[SillyNickName4me]

Since perl scripts running on a Linux machine have access to the commandline, yes, they can send raw ethernet packages, given they run with the correct privileges and availability of correct tools. No native capability in perl for doing this is required at all. When running natively compiled JAVA on the same platform, and giving it access to the commandline, you'd have the exact same situation.

Re:Layer 2 Access Required [Security?!?]

[megabeck42]

Getting raw ethernet frames, in Linux, is trivial. For example, to get such a socket from python: (copied from the scapy startup routines)

self.ins = socket.socket(socket.AF_PACKET, socket.SOCK_RAW, socket.htons(ETH_P_ALL))

Whats that? You want to only get the traffic from a certain ethernet card, or want to transmit out a certain card? Easy. (In C, from my own code.)

        struct sockaddr_ll device_sa;
        int filedes;
        filedes = socket(AF_PACKET, SOCK_RAW, htons(ETH_P_ALL));
        device_sa.sll_family = AF_PACKET;
        device_sa.sll_protocol = htons(ETH_P_ALL);
        device_sa.sll_ifindex = ifindex;
        bind(filedes, (struct sockaddr *)&device_sa, sizeof(device_sa));

You can get a device's ifindex with the SIOCGIFINDEX call, or with the rtnetlink RTM_GETLINK request.

All you need for this is root, or suid root. In fact, I think you can just use CAP_RAW and CAP_NET_ADMIN, I believe.

Re:Layer 2 Access Required [Security?!?]

[Deorus]

> If there is a vanilla plain-jane non-souped-up installation of a Perl interpreter that allows you access to Layer 2, then it's going against the Java security model.

Just don't run the perl-script as root and you are good to go. I just can't see why Perl would ever have to follow that Java security model. Operating systems come with privilege systems for a reason.

I have looked around...

[Anonymous Coward]

...we have a serious energy crisis *now*. All it took was one hurricane to fubar the energy industry and cause shortages. Energy doesn't exist in a vacuum, take it away at one point, and other areas are put to the task of taking up the slack, which still leaves you short. Check the headlines out, we might be a month or two away from a significant new middle eastern war, one that might shut down a lot of the oil being produced and shipped around the world. This isn't 50 or a hundred years in the future, this is today, now. Every summer, we are under the threat of massive blackouts or "rolling" blackouts or brownouts from demand that is barely met with the existing infrastructure. And what about the cost, indirect? Look at the medical problems associated with just living heavily urban and soaking in a toxic soup 24/7. Look at the political problems having to deal with dead dino doo from the ground in weird areas of the world. Look at the bogus "leaders" we have and their ties to the greed and stupidity merchants.

The good news is, the individual CAN do something about it, at least for your own needs. It's doable TODAY if you have a mind to it and want to safeguard your own future. If you wait for government, "the market" and insane geopolitics to fix things, well, don't be surprised if you become an energy victim. If anyone is waiting for the "hydrogen economy" or even the "well, we'll just build more nukes" to fix things, you STILL are going to be waiting and probably affected negatively when the next crisis hits. and just 'building more nukes" won't replace and add on to all the new transmission lines that would need to be built, and it doesn't address transportation. We can't get the car companies to even come up with a normal cheap all electric commuter car, something highly doable now, so we are supposed to trust them to come up with an affordable fuel cell hydrogen car, in the hundreds of millions needed, PLUS replace all the normal liquid fuel gas stations and delivery infrastructure with hydrogen stations? And it is allegedly going to be cheap??? and soon??? I don't think so...

Me, not waiting, I got the message loud and clear,so I have taken proactive steps to secure at least some of my energy needs, without having to rely on forces outside my control. You (anyone you, generally speaking) can complain, theorize, or act to make things better. I choose "act". I re arranged my priorities. I'm not waiting for an invite, I clearly remember the OPEC embargo, I don't need a second reminder of how things can go from "affordable and normal" to "this really sucks and man is it expensive and I hope I can get ANY tomorrow". My first is securing a minimal supply of electricity, home produced, this is done. The next one is vehicle fuel. I'm not waiting for the miracle hydrogen fuel cell million dollar car, that's way off in the future still and you'll still be tied to THEIR profit and politics centered infrastructure whenever it arrives. No thanks, I've seen how they fool around, waste time, waste money and want me to make them rich while they subvert the political process and help foment wars. The big energy cartels have gotten enough of my money over the years, and despite all the promises, it looks little better now than it did in the 70's, in fact it has gotten worse waiting for those gents to get off their ass and actually do anything besides talk about it and throw out a gee whizz prototype of something once in awhile.

Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenience)

[nathanh]

Fusion is up in the air at the moment, nuclear will work if you ever get round the environmentalists,

Yeah, because those damn environmentalists wield so much power and have so much money, why they're practically running the US government!

and wind and tidal power can provide about 5%.

That's nonsense. Slashdot ran an article on this just recently. Global wind power in class 3 areas alone could generate 72 terawatts which is 60 times global consumption. Class 3 wind turbines are financially comparable to brown coal. North America has the greatest number of class 3 areas in the world.

But let's not stop at wind power. A home with solar panels for hot water (not the expensive, dirty and inefficient photovoltaic) saves 50% on heating costs. The panels pay for themselves in 5 years and have a 25 year lifetime. They are maintenance free (they are effectively just black plastic pipes behind glass sheets) and easy to repair when damaged (simple plumbing that a home handyman could do).

But let's not stop at solar and wind power. Changing your light bulbs from incandescent to energy efficient flouros will save 75% on lighting costs. Modern flouros are compact, come in a variety of shapes, only need to be changed once every 5-10 years, degrade slowly rather than blowing suddenly at inconvenient times, and have equivalent candela output to a 75W incandescent.

But let's not stop at solar power and wind power and energy efficiency. Your SUV gets 10MPG yet a comfortable Subaru Legacy has equivalent seating and storage but gets 33MPG. Your average driver will save between $750 and $1250 per year while simultaneously slashing their automobile oil consumption by two thirds. That's financially sensible and enviromentally friendlier.

The solutions are here right now. You need to stop waiting for the magic silver bullet like fusion, or blaming "environmentalists" for preventing fission, or wondering why you're spending $2000+ per year on fuel for your gargantuan SUV, and simply start using the technology that is here right now and is economical right now and is practical right now. You can make the difference right now.

I'm off-grid.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's amazing how quickly you learn to understand and control your energy usage when you're running off battery banks replenished by PV panels and wind turbines.

Every watt, volt and amp becomes precious, which means you must be aware of what is consuming how much and when.

Cooking and heating is done via as and intelligent construction methods, such as efficient use of insulation. Water gets heated via a thermosyphon, which works very well, even though I'm in an alpine environment (6,200' asl).

The only things I've given up are electric hotwater heating and clothes-drying, plus one or two other very heavy load devices. I still have my computers, stereo, and basics such as light.

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[Shadow99_1]

Contrary to popular belief not everyone in the US owns a gas guzzling SUV... In fact my american car (Chrysler) gets better MPG than the subaru you mentioned.

As for everything else...

I did change my light bulbs, the effect I have to say seems negligable... Either my power company doens't bother to look at my meter to figure out energy use, or my lighting costs are fairly low and therefor the change made to small a difference to notice...

I don't have solar panels used for hot water... My house is already built (& I didn't build it), so the cost to change things now is to much for my fairly average salary to cover... I could try to get a loan to pay for it, but that would nuke any savings I'd see for years... I also doubt anyone would give me a loan... Winter would also cause some issues for this... Heating bills are largest in the winter and solar isn't very effective in general when the solar panels are covered in snow...

As for wind.... That's not a change I can make... Even if I did live in a good area (& I think winter would kill any effective use where I live), I'm not likely to be able to put up a tower... First their is the money issue again... Then I think my city would probably frown on it to... When I looked into wireless internet options I found out my area is heavily restricted on building anything over 30" tall... Less would probably not be so good with the number of trees around here...

Nice ideas, but practicality is questionable...

Why are "standby" and "sleep" functions needed?

[dpbsmith]

I don't understand why there should be hardware standby and sleep functions. The hardware should be provided with a means of reading and writing its entire state. When you power down, the contents of RAM and all the hardware state should get written to the hard drive. When you power up normally, instead of going through a lengthy boot process, it should read and restore the state the contents of RAM and the hardware state, and pick up where it left off.

Of course, that would require hardware to be designed... you know, like to a standard. But isn't that what WINHEC is supposed to be about.

All these sleep and standby functions are only there because it's easier to just keep the power on than to save and restore the state. Except... it apparently isn't that easy, because failure to wake from sleep is not uncommon.

Re:Why are "standby" and "sleep" functions needed?

[TeknoHog]

I don't understand why there should be hardware standby and sleep functions. The hardware should be provided with a means of reading and writing its entire state. When you power down, the contents of RAM and all the hardware state should get written to the hard drive. When you power up normally, instead of going through a lengthy boot process, it should read and restore the state the contents of RAM and the hardware state, and pick up where it left off.

Linux's software suspend does just this, see my other post here. Well, in fact you have to boot the kernel normally (to initialize hardware, etc.) but instead of a lengthy init, you get the restored state.

Re:Why are "standby" and "sleep" functions needed?

[City Jim 3000]

Welcome to the 21:st century... In windows it's called "hibernate" but I don't know if there's an ACPI state for it.

The problem is that it takes a while to transfer 2GB to the hard drive. And restoring the state takes almost as long as booting up fresh.

Re:Why are "standby" and "sleep" functions needed?

[welshie]

It's all very well having a system suspend to disk and effectively stop processing until an external event happens.

If you happen to have network connections to another machine, the other machine won't know about this until it tries to send a packet, and never gets an acknowledgement.

When the system wakes up again, all the apps by default think nothing has happened, and network sessions just die. All you ssh sessions and the like are dead, and need re-connecting.

That's why the OS needs some sort of signalling to the apps that such an event has happened, and it's up to the application designers to get their application to handle this accordingly. Sadly, this is beyond the architecture of many network applications. I can't think of an implementation of ssh/sshd that will indeed pick up where the client left off when it went into suspense, despite the server thinking it's dropped off the network and tcp timeout happens.

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[Anonymous Coward]

If I get rid of my SUV, what am I going to do with my 26" rims? They'd look like shite on a Subaru.

S1 sucks, S3 is great, if it works for you...

[evilviper]

I've been trying to get power management to work on PCs for over a decade now, and we're still not there...

S1 (aka. sleep) works on most every system, since it's been around forever, but it'll only save you maybe 2% over the system being normally up and running (doing useful tasks).

S3 (aka. suspend) is the damn-good one. It only uses about 0.5 watts more power than your computer being completely off (I suppose it might be different with a more effecient power supply like a Seasonic). However, it's damn near impossible to get it to work. Windows XP, Linux, FreeBSD. Tried on dozens of completely different machines, and I've never seen it work, once. The drivers for pretty much ALL the hardware need to be written with APCI in-mind.

Hell, if I could just find a list of the motherboards, soundcards, and other components that have drivers on FreeBSD6 that will resume successfully from S3, I'd put together a couple systems with just those componets. Electricity in CA isn't cheap, and I'd be saving lots with instant-on from S3. No more boot-up waits, no more opening-up the same apps every time, etc. Just hit a button, and start working (as soon as the monitor can warm up).

S5 (aka. hibernate) writes out RAM to disk, and reads from disk upon restart. I'm not a particular fan of this method, as it would take quite a while to resume on a system with a large ammount of RAM. Still, it has the potential to be even lower power provided you're going to be away long enough.

So, in my experience, you're still screwed... Just shut-off the machine when you're done.

Re:S1 sucks, S3 is great, if it works for you...

[ionpro]

I guess the milllions of us laptop users who use S3 on a regular basis must be dreaming then. Linux's support for S3 blows. I don't think I've had it fail for me on Windows XP once. I do IT support, and I've only had two or three cases of a computer not being able to wake from S3 suspend on Windows XP. This is the ONLY REASON why I don't use Linux on my laptop, and it's a damn shame.

Re:S1 sucks, S3 is great, if it works for you...

[evilviper]

I guess the milllions of us laptop users who use S3 on a regular basis must be dreaming then

Okay, fine. I should have specified "Desktop" or "Workstation" systems. It's much easier to make it work on a notebook, where everything is built-in.

Re:S1 sucks, S3 is great, if it works for you...

[TeknoHog]

S5 (aka. hibernate) writes out RAM to disk, and reads from disk upon restart. I'm not a particular fan of this method, as it would take quite a while to resume on a system with a large ammount of RAM. Still, it has the potential to be even lower power provided you're going to be away long enough.

I use Linux's software suspend (which I've already mentioned too many times in this discussion :) It only takes a few seconds to restore 512MB of RAM. One reason it achieves this is that RAM contents are compressed with LZF when written on the disk, to avoid the I/O bottleneck.

Re:S1 sucks, S3 is great, if it works for you...

[Trelane]

Linux's support for S3 blows.

Not really. It works; the problem is usually working around little hardware gotchas. This is where having a team of tech engineers do that work for you comes in, which is why it generally works better with Windows than with Linux--with Windows, HP, Dell, and friends do all the work for you (and, notably, for Microsoft. Great scheme for Microsoft!). With Linux, since it's not supported on the hardware, you have to do it yourself.

It works anywhere between fine out of the box and totally crappy, depending on the particular quirks of your hardware (for example, ATI cards apparently need VBE information saved, whereas other vid cards apparently don't). A friend of mine's laptop worked 100% with S3; my Inspiron (very similar to his) with a newer card (otherwise same laptop) worked great--except the video was useless after resume. I then found VBEtool tricks, and now it works fine (except I have to do funky tricks due to ATI proprietary driver suckage; it works great with the 2d drivers).

In conclusion, if you want to run Linux, don't buy a notebook "Designed for Windows"--it will only be guaranteed to work with Windows. Now, due to current market conditions, finding a fully-supported Linux notebook can be an exercise in furstration. If you know of a reliable way to get a Linux notebook, please drop me a line!

Re:S1 sucks, S3 is great, if it works for you...

[tyraen]

I run XP on my desktop, so I don't know if this is relevant. I've had three different video cards (all fairly modern; Nvidia FX5200, Nvidia 6600GT, and ATI 9200), and S3 has always worked perfectly for me.

Re:S1 sucks, S3 is great, if it works for you...

[olman]

Short answer: Don't use VIA chipset motherboards.

Longer answer: I have never got S3 to work on a box running some variety of VIA chipset mobo. I have got it to work beautifully in every setup I have used that had SIS/Intel/Nvidia/AMD chipset on various W2k/XP boxes at work and home.

Note that "beautifully" does not imply that getting initially working setup was painless operation. But with correct combination of (WHQ) drivers it has always been doable. On current version of home/work boxes it was pretty much plug + play.

Re:S1 sucks, S3 is great, if it works for you...

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

S3 (aka. suspend) is the damn-good one. It only uses about 0.5 watts more power than your computer being completely off (I suppose it might be different with a more effecient power supply like a Seasonic). However, it's damn near impossible to get it to work. Windows XP, Linux, FreeBSD. Tried on dozens of completely different machines, and I've never seen it work, once. The drivers for pretty much ALL the hardware need to be written with APCI in-mind

Nearly every notebook supports S3 just fine, as do most commercial desktops. Even my DFI/Athlon 64 custom-built system works fine with S3.

If you're using Windows, make sure that your drivers are WHQL tested - part of the testing includes handling suspend properly.

Re:S1 sucks, S3 is great, if it works for you...

[bruns]

The times I've noticed S3 doesn't work right...

1) Timbuktu doesn't seem to work 100% right under XP SP2 on some configurations, and especially causes problems with S3 mode (like not being able to resume from S3 without a almost 4 minute delay)
2) Video drivers - I've seen them corrupt the screen horribly on restore or even worse force you to turn the machine off completely
3) Cheapie sound cards - same situation as video

Upgrading the driver or removing the problem program usually works like a charm.

Re:S1 sucks, S3 is great, if it works for you...

[evilviper]

Hmm, you have a good point. Most of them certainly are VIA-based motherboards.

Re:S1 sucks, S3 is great, if it works for you...

[ArsonSmith]

And here I thought the advantage to open source was that other people would do most of the work for you. In the end it is closed source that gets all the good help.

Re:S1 sucks, S3 is great, if it works for you...

[Trelane]

And here I thought the advantage to open source was that other people would do most of the work for you.

No. with you.

In the end it is closed source that gets all the good help.

Good help with hardware? Certainly. Wellll, no.

See, you have to be popular enough to get the good help with hardware; it has nothing to do with closed or open source. If a new OS came out tomorrow, they'd face the same problems Linux is facing--the fact that lots of bits of hardware are quirky (or even broken), so to support all hardware properly, you must either be a popular enough OS for everyone to support you or else you must get a hold of every piece of hardware out there, and support it . Microsoft takes one tack (very nice place, if you can get there); OSS must (yet) take the other. Apple is in-between, since they're well-known enough to get some hardware vendors' attention, yet draw from FOSS projects too.

It's interesting to note that many of the quirks in hardware would likely not be present in a non-monopoly situation. Right now, if the hardware has some quirk they have to work around (e.g. broken DSDTs or DDC information), they need only fix for a few operating systems (the WinNT series if they wish to only support Windows; recent OSX if they want to support Mac, which is rare for non-standardized stuff); this can sometimes be done pretty quickly and easily (e.g. supplying a .inf file with the right mode information). In a situation where there are several equal players, vendors must stick to established standards, or else either provide fixes for a large number of OSes and versions or reduce their market by a non-negligible amount. Additionally, the time from initial creation to standard would be shorter on average, for similar reasons.

In fact, it's the Open nature of Open Source that Linux has a shot at all of suppoorting the hardware out there, given current market conditions.

Re:S1 sucks, S3 is great, if it works for you...

[TClevenger]

My Powerbook G4 goes through several dozen sleep/resume cycles between patch/reboots. I just close the lid and it sleeps, and when I open the lid, by the time I get my screensaver password entered, it has already reconnected to my WLAN, reconnected to AIM, reconnected all of my SSH shares to my servers and resumed any SFTP transfers, and is downloading my email.

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[andy_shepard]

From your link: ... could produce approximately 72 terawatts and that capturing even a fraction of that energy could provide the 1.6-1.8 terawatts that made up the world's electricity usage in the year 2000. A terawatt is 1 billion watts, ...

Good-bye, credibility....

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[libcoder]

*ahem* I seem to remember a terawatt being one TRILLION watts, not one billion. That's just me, I could be wrong...but I'm not.

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[evilviper]

I don't have solar panels used for hot water... [...] Winter would also cause some issues for this... Heating bills are largest in the winter and solar isn't very effective in general when the solar panels are covered in snow...

Everyone says solar, because it's trendy. Truth is, you'd almost certainly get much better use out of a ground-source heat-pump. Doesn't matter what the sun is doing, you can get your home heated or cooled, and all the hot water you need, by a single unit, probably only costing you $10 in electricity per month.

The big cost is burying the lines, which either involves plowing-up a hole the size of a pool. If space is constrained, you can drill a vertical hole the size of a well instead. If you already happen to have a well, you could save a lot by going for a water-source heatpump instead.

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[Anonymous Coward]

Either my power company doens't bother to look at my meter to figure out energy use

Erhm.. I've had this happen actually. Energy companies like to estimate usage based on previous usage. You can tell if they've actually checked it because it will say 'Actual' on the bill instead of 'Estimated'.

I know this because I recently bought a new condo and didn't live in it for a month. The energy bill was over $80. It turns out that they didn't measure it, they just estimated based on the last owner's usage. I had to call and complain to get them to send someone out to read the meter.

Many smalls make one big...

[Poingggg]

(Translation from a Dutch proverb). 5 Watt is not much, but anyone would agree it would make sense to switch off a 100W appliance for an hour if you don't use it, especially if you do it every day.
This 5W standby uses more in 24 hours then this 100W appliance in one hour. Multiply that by the number of appliances and draw your own conclusions. But despite that many consider it not usefull to switch these appliances off. I wonder why.

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[jonored]

old Brit billion; americans use a different spoken numbering system, and it hasn't quite hit full penetration. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[LordVader717]

How a comment like this could be mederated informative is beyond me.

It's just a load of whinging.

If you don't want to invest in Solar heating, that's your choice. They do actually pay for themselves within a few years though. Just don't be complaining you can't afford the oil in years to come.
It's not unusual for people to renew their heating systems, and remortgage their house to get work done.

As for snow, have you heard of an invention called a brush?

And wind power isn't meant for personal use any more than fusion reactors. It's up to you to support it and maybe a little public initiative. Nobody's expecting you to put up a 300-foot turbine in your backyard.

Both technologies have proven themselves very praticable.

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[ThePiMan2003]

As for snow, have you heard of an invention called a brush?

I take it that you live somewhere that gets very little snow fall. Asking someone to climb up on there roof after a major snow and ice storm to clean of heating panels is fairly stupid.

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[Shadow99_1]

Sure I'm whining (I'm guessing that's what you meant to type), whatever... Anyways...

I'd have to not already have mortgages on my house to be able to get one and I think I covered that under loans anyways... A mortgage is a form of loan after all (with house as collatoral). In my case the house in question was my grandmother's and has two mortgages on it, that unfortunately I get to pay off now that she's dead (she has been for nearly a decade now). Sure I got her house, but I also got her debt on said house. I'll still be paying off part of her debt for a few years. It's also not a new house (it's a 1900's colonial house in case your curious) and needs lots of various things done to it. Luckily my dad could update the electrical wiring so modern appliances can't kill the electricity anymore, but even that was fairly expensive for what I can afford to do to it.

Yeah I've heard of brushes... You gonna get out on my roof on either the second floor (where you'd have to climb out a window) or worse the actual roof on the top of the third floor (with no sane access outside of summer with a ladder on the roof below) to do it? I sure as hell am not, I'd rather not accidentally slip and fall 30 feet or 45 feet... I'd be worried about the roof even holding up between my weight and the weight of the snow. The roof over the expansion actually collapsed from the snow about two years ago (in turn I simply tore down the expansion my great grandfather added). The house btw predates the law I mentioned earleir about structures above 30 feet within city limits.

My earlier post was entirely a matter of practicality. I keep hearing arguments like I replied to that seem to not consider real world economics. The average salary in the US is not $50k+ a year. Not everyoen can simply spend money to do these things. I've done as much as reasonably possible for my financial situation and what I can consider reliable technologies to invest in. I reported the results of that & why the others aren't so possible. Someone obviously decided what I said made sense in that way.

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[level_headed_midwest]

Have you ever USED a heat pump in any area that gets below freezing in winter? They work well as air-conditioners but provide very little heat. They do suck lots of electricity though.

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[clydemaxwell]

ahaha seriously what??

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[winwar]

"Have you ever USED a heat pump in any area that gets below freezing in winter?"

Perhaps you missed the GEOTHERMAL qualifier? Instead of exchanging heat with the air it uses the ground which is at a fairly constant temperature (warmer than air in winter, cooler in summer).

Solves most of the problems of a heat pump but at significant cost.

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[willfe]

The rest of your post is great, and spot-on, but I do have a question about the nuclear argument: environmentalists may not have the deepest pockets, but they have succeeded in stopping new nuclear power plant contruction dead in its tracks in the US. We haven't commissioned a new nuclear power plant (to my knowledge; I'd love to be wrong on this one, so let me know if I missed something) since the seventies, have we?

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[Anonymous Coward]

You could be wrong, and you are. It's both: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales . Now I could be right, and I am.

Obligatory...

[DrYak]

My servers do usually not live for more than 5 years so using higher precision will not change anything.

You obviously don't run Linux...

/DUCKS and runs away fast...

Re:Obligatory...

[Hymer]

No need to run... we do use Linux. Lifetime is defined by mgmt, mostly due to increase of service contract costs after 3 years.

ACPI state

[DrYak]

but I don't know if there's an ACPI state for it.

It's S4

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure I'm whining (I'm guessing that's what you meant to type),

He probably meant whinging; it's a valid word. Look it up on dictionary.com if you don't know what it means.

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[sparkz]

Interesting "bragging-rights": 'I get more than 30MPG'.... Being a Brit, I'd see 30MPG as pretty expensive running costs. Admittedly, not all Brits these days see things the same way, we're following the Americans into this "I need a 3+ litre 4WD monster to get the kids to school" mentality. Personally, I need to get myself to work and back, so I've got a (rather overkill) 1.3 litre VW Polo for my 10 mile daily journey. For historical reasons (I used to pound the country until recently, doing about 20k miles per year) we've also got a 1.8 litre Ford Mondeo, which is handy for getting the kids around, but that is overkill.

We actually looked into this a couple of weeks ago; If it wasn't for depreciation, we'd swap that for a smaller car, except that we could swap the Mondeo for a same-aged smaller equivalent (Focus) for zero cash. That is, the larger car (which we currently own) is worth the same as the smaller car of the same age.

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[Anonymous Coward]

We haven't commissioned a new nuclear power plant (to my knowledge; I'd love to be wrong on this one, so let me know if I missed something) since the seventies, have we?

That has less to do with lobbying (though that has been marginally effective) and more to do with economics. Nuclear power was thought to be cheap but if you do the sums it actually turns out to be more expensive than oil fired plants. The fuel costs for nuclear are low but the waste treatment, waste storage and security requirements make it very expensive.

Nuclear power is cost effective in countries like France where oil is *very* expensive.

Calif Universal Waste law goes in effect Feb 6

[IvyKing]

FWIW, in a couple of weeks, it will be illegal to dispose of batteries in a landfill - they must be turned into a proper waste disposal or recycling facility.

You do have a good point.

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[oakgrove]

my area is heavily restricted on building anything over 30" tall

Damn, you folks must be pretty short then is all I have to say.

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[Shadow99_1]

"He probably meant whinging; it's a valid word. Look it up on dictionary.com if you don't know what it means."

He may, but even so I'm still not wrong as that is simply the british word for the same thing. I however am not british, so to me I have to translate...

Re:S1 sucks, S3 is great, in Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

S3 works fine on my Centrino laptop running Ubuntu 5.10.

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[Shadow99_1]

I wasn't trying to 'brag', I was stating the fact that his option wasn't even all that good at what he seemed to be griping about... My car is quite big enough for 5 people and it gets good gas mileage compared to most peoples choice in vehicle. What I mean is you don't have to trade off capability for better MPG...

Btw it's nice that you only have to drive 10 miles a day... My commute is 25 miles each direction. That's figuring I don't need to stop anywhere else as well. I don't have much choice in that. I needed something that was good all around and picked what I feel was one of the best optiosn for that.

Btw 2... As far as I'm aware they don't sell the VW Polo stateside (unless it's under another name)... In fact I can't think of a VW dealership that carries much more than the 'new' beetle designs here.

Fluorescents are nice, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

But let's not stop at solar and wind power. Changing your light bulbs from incandescent to energy efficient flouros will save 75% on lighting costs. Modern flouros are compact, come in a variety of shapes, only need to be changed once every 5-10 years, degrade slowly rather than blowing suddenly at inconvenient times, and have equivalent candela output to a 75W incandescent.

(I'm going to post this AC because, well, I work for a fluorescent ballast manufacturer.)

Two points:

• You're overstating your case: fluorescents are more efficient, but not 75% more efficient. A bit less than 60% is a more accurate number. You should also recognize that "efficiency" has to take into account the significantly higher cost of a compact fluorescent and it's fixture. The really good-looking return on investment figures for compact fluorescents happen in commercial applications where huge demand charges at peak periods drive electricity rates into the stratosphere. Residential customers in most parts of the U.S. will not see such dramatic savings. Savings, yes--but CFLs are a wee bit over-hyped.
• The big problem:Do you know how fluorescents fluoresce? They contain mercury in the lamp--the lamp "lights" when a plasma forms in the mercury gas. This represents a HUGE environment issue--because those lamps typically get crushed in a landfill, releasing that mercury. Which is a bad, bad thing.

Re:Fluorescents are nice, but...

[Soruk]

In the UK (240V 50Hz), our CFLs come in various sizes.. 9W for a 40W equivalent, 11W (60W), 15W (100W) and 20W (120W) are common. At the brighter end of the scale they certainly seem to be better than 60 - or 75% - closer to 85%.

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[unitron]

"From your link: ...

A terawatt is 1 billion watts, ...

Good-bye, credibility...."

If what you're trying to say is that 1 billion watts is a gigawatt and not a terawatt that's correct where 1 billion is equal to one thousand million, however, there are parts of the world where 1 billion is equal to 1 million million.

Law of Diminishing Returns

[StikyPad]

Well, you have to remember that ACPI was developed in response to the orders-of-magnitude larger waste of electricity as a result of equipment being left on indiscriminately, compared to standby or hibernation (ACPI G1 S3/S4). The chief power drain was (and is) obviously the CRT. Whether deliberately or inadvertantly, these things weren't getting turned off when not in use. Of course, ACPI can also spin down the hard drives and send the system into standby or the more efficient (and less reliable) hibernation mode, but those power sinks were almost insignificant when compared to the monitor, especially back when CPUs actually used far less power than a lightbulb. Even so, hibernation shuts off power to almost every component.

There is a specification to actually turn off the monitor through ACPI, as opposed to putting it in standby (soft off), although just how much power that saves is almost exclusively dependant on the manufacturer's implementation. It is possible to design a monitor so that it draws no power when set to soft off, aside from losses inherent to the transformer in the power supply, and a VGA signal switch on the monitor would then switch it back on. I'm not sure how many (if any) manufacturers actually do that, and I suspect more than a few leave some circuitry powered, as opposed to using the voltage from the "power on" VGA signal itself. Even so, I doubt the power consumption is worth fretting over.

Of course, it's been a few years since ACPI was first implemented, and the vast majority of systems in use today comply with the specifications. LCDs have also replaced CRTs in many workplaces, so the benefits of further power management are decreasing rapidly. At some point, it simply costs more money to implement stricter power management than can be gained through energy cost savings. The point of diminishing returns. I think the current ACPI spec has already surpassed that point and, if properly configured by administrators, the gains from completely removing power outweigh the potential benefits. This is especially true in an organization which typically performs updates after hours.

Could hardware be designed to be even more energy efficient? As long as the current load is somewhere between zero and infinity, the answer is always yes, however real-world circumstances will always dictate design. Unless we see energy prices skyrocket, I wouldn't hold my breath (or advocate) hardware (principally motherboard and power supply) manufacturers pursuing more efficient ACPI compliance.

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[evilviper]

Have you ever USED a heat pump in any area that gets below freezing in winter?

Not just any heatpump... a closed-loop ground-source heatpump. Or an open-loop well-water source heat-pump, if you already have a well.

It doesn't matter what the tempurature of the air is, the ground stays within a couple degrees, year-round. It may be -20F above ground, but it will still be around 65F once you go down about 30 feet.

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[LordVader717]

Depending on the construction, it might be hard to access.

What I should have said is that it wouldn't be too hard to keep clean.
The surfaces are so flat that the snow would easily slide off, and could easily be done automatically where it's an issue.

But the angle of the roof would probably be enough for it to slide of by itself.
The simplist solution would be to pump warm water through the panels, which would make the snow slide off.

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[LordVader717]

Sure a mortgage is a loan, what else? It is meant to help normal people pay for larger investments, such as property. If you think you haven't got enough money to pay for such an investment, then that's up to you I guess. (I can't see why you would have two mortgages on a hundred-year-old house that hasn't had any work done in decades anyway)

Depending on what you investment is, it isn't that hard to get a loan for such investments though.

The GDP per capita in the US is about $40k a year BTW.

Alot of poeple can afford it, and alot of people do. If you seriously can't afford to have some work done on your house, then you're a bit of a minority.
Ask around. I bet you won't find it too hard to find someone who bought a house in the past few years, or had something done like had a new heating system installed.
Work and investments like that are completely normal. Everyone does it, and it isn't only something for the obscenely rich.

If you're getting other things done, why not grab the chance and make an investment for the future and coming energy-prices?

You will acutally be saving money in the long term.

As for snow, it could be easily removed by pumping heated water through the panels, which would cause the snow to slide off the flat surface.
Or it could be done by automatic brushes.
Not a mojor problem.

Coming back to practicality, as I said, solar panels are within the financial reach of the average home owner. And wind turbines aren't meant for private households anway. But placing large wind-farms in windy areas can produce electricity cheaply and easily.

BTW, I did mean to say "whinging", the british word.

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[Anonymous Coward]

I laughed both times you posted the suggestion that you pump heated water through the panels to get rid of the snow. One major snowstorm will have you putting more heat into the panels to melt snow and heat the outside world than you are likely to get out of those same panels in a cold and cloudy New England winter.

Basically, anywhere you are likely to need a significant amount of heat in the winter, you aren't likely to gain much heat from a solar-thermal water system. There simply isn't much sunlight available to provide heat: clouds, short days, rain and snow mean that there is little sunlight to work with, and if the air is cold enough then even the occasional beautiful sunny day isn't going to provide much benefit. Again, the energy put in to maintaining such a system will in many cases be more than you can hope to gain from it.

Even in such situations when you are only drawing heat in the summer months (say, heating a swimming pool) you need to be in a warm, sunny climate to make it worth the money.

And finally, before you point out that we should think about more than just money, keep in mind that money is a pretty reasonable measure of the amount of energy that goes into a system. Any supposedly environmentally friendly solution that requires more energy to create and maintain than it will ever generate in return is just another inefficient energy waster.

Even such net energy negative systems can be worthwhile if they might eventually be refined into something that is net positive, but your example of solar-thermal heating simply is a non-starter in many (if not most) of the climates where heat is a major use of energy resources.

Closed loop geothermal heat pumps are another animal entirely, probably justifiable in a large number of situations, but that is left as an exercise for another post.

Kill-a-Watt

[TClevenger]

If you are truly concerned about what your equipment uses, get a Kill-a-Watt meter. Very easy to use, includes a KWh counter as well as an instant wattage display. You can find it around the 'Net for $27 or less.

Some things I've tested recently:

My PC speakers use 40 watts, even when "turned off". Result: they're on a power strip with a switch.
My HP Laserjet 2100N uses 12-16 watts (depending on the fan), when in Power Saver. Result: it gets turned off when not in use.
My PIII-650 desktop server consumed about 50 watts when idle. Result: replaced it with a Toshiba Tecra PIII-650 (with a broken screen, cheap on eBay), which draws 14 watts when idle.

I also realized that my Powerbook power supply consumes less than 1 watt when plugged in but no laptop is connected, or about 2 watts when the laptop is plugged in and fully charged, so I'm not as concerned about unplugging it anymore.

My next checks: the TV's, older transformer-based clock radios, wall warts and the deep freeze. I will also take running "baseline" checks of my major appliances (fridge, furnace, washer), so I can recheck them once a year and identify when an appliance is running too hard (bad motor bearing, etc.)

Re:Kill-a-Watt

[queazocotal]

I've found three seperate devices of this sort, that are significantly inaccirate on power factor corrected switch mode supplies.

Compared with measuring the actual power on a scope, it was overestimating the power 100%.

This was with a server in a cupboard.

I tested that the scope measurement was real by turning the server off, leaving the fans on, and comparing the temperature of the outgoing air with 150W of ordinary light bulbs.

It was reading about 150W, with one drive, one duron 1800 processor.

I think this is as they sample too slowly, they are accurate for non power-factor-corrected power supplies (linear and SMPS) as well as motors, heaters, ...

Re:Kill-a-Watt

[TClevenger]

I've heard that about some clamp meters especially. This unit has good reviews from members of the electric vehicle community, and it actually shows power factor as well, so I believe it takes that into account.

Re:Kill-a-Watt

[queazocotal]

Not clamp, these were two seperate brands of plug-in meters, that both misread.

They both accurately reported normal loads, including ones with non unity power factors.

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[Tweekster]

Chrysler ? american car? Actually it is more likely a Canadian car. However, my previous Toyota and current Mazda are both American cars.

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[LWATCDR]

"That's nonsense. Slashdot ran an article on this just recently. Global wind power in class 3 areas alone could generate 72 terawatts which is 60 times global consumption. Class 3 wind turbines are financially comparable to brown coal. North America has the greatest number of class 3 areas in the world."
You can not control the wind. Without good storage you will have issues also they are noisy and no one knows what will happen to the climate if you extract that level of energy from wind. If nothing else you will decrease the wind speed down wind of the turbines. Before you say nonesense remember that in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and into the 90s, Dams where considered the ultimate "clean" energy.

"But let's not stop at wind power. A home with solar panels for hot water (not the expensive, dirty and inefficient photovoltaic) saves 50% on heating costs. The panels pay for themselves in 5 years and have a 25 year lifetime. They are maintenance free (they are effectively just black plastic pipes behind glass sheets) and easy to repair when damaged (simple plumbing that a home handyman could do)." Been their and done that. And no they where maintenance hogs.
The cheap plastic ones that people use for pools seem to be okay but they do not hold up well to hurricanes and tend work well in the south which is where hurricanes tend to be. The South West may be more friendly to them but I don't know. In most warm areas you are better off using a heat recovery unit with your AC to heat water. It saves you double.

"But let's not stop at solar power and wind power and energy efficiency. Your SUV gets 10MPG yet a comfortable Subaru Legacy has equivalent seating and storage but gets 33MPG. Your average driver will save between $750 and $1250 per year while simultaneously slashing their automobile oil consumption by two thirds. That's financially sensible and environmentally friendlier."
No it doesn't http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/21063.shtm l. These are EPA numbers which means the highway mileage is taken at 55MPH. So it is way optimistic.
If you are going to rant you and publish numbers on Slashdot you should get them right.

Sure we should look at alternative energy but nothing is as clear cut as you make it out to be.

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[Anonymous Coward]

The power and gas company does that here too. Our last bill was around 300 a month, now we submit the meter readings online, and our bill is around half that.

What a scam.

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[sparkz]

Until recently, my daily commute was 25 miles in each direction, which was nice enough. It's great to be just down the road from work (though it gives me less of an excuse to work-from-home when I choose to!). New company, new rules - I can drive my own car for up to 100 miles (I choose the old Polo for the office, the 2003 Mondeo for longer drags), but use a rental car for trips over 100 miles round-trip (that's pretty much all of them). It's a load of hassle getting a hire car delivered and picked up, but if I do enough miles I'll get a company car (cheaper for me, worse for the environment, as it's bound too be a 1.8l at least!) and I'm already (after 4 months in the new job) stacked up to get a company car at this rate! Isn't it ironic? Get a new, local job which allows me to get a cheap and efficient car, just for the new employer to replace it with a larger car at their expense (which, given the insurance costs, I'll be inclined to go for!) No win, no win ... er, or something !

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, not flaming, but the solar power water heating is not always remotely economical. You figures are worse than the most zealous salesman I spoke to about it! I live in FL, supposedly an ideal localtion for these things. The trouble is the cost of the installation (ignoring electric pump running costs) it would take almost 25 years to recover costs even assuming very high power usage for the water boiler from our power bills. The roofs around here are expected to last around 12 years, likewise for these solar heaters.

We happen to have very low power usage compared to our neighbors in near identical houses, so for the others, these things may just pay for themselves before the sun, storms, tornados and hurricane rip them up.

Why do we have 1/2 the power consumption of our neighbors? No idea, we have the water boiler on a timer, don't leave lights or TV etc on, don't light up the house at night, power PCs off when not in use etc etc. Our annual power cost was under $1300, and that includes a pool pump and the expected A/C in Florida. Yet our neighbors think nothing of averaging $300 a month, hittin $400 in the summer period. It's going to be touch to beat our bill this year, seeing as out power company has just increased it's charges by a minimum of 16%. However, we will try!

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[dangitman]

I don't have solar panels used for hot water... My house is already built (& I didn't build it), so the cost to change things now is to much for my fairly average salary to cover..

Solar hot water is extremely cheap. You can build a system yourself with little more than some cheap irrigation tubing, and a pump.

I've got news for you...

[Anonymous Coward]

If I get rid of my SUV, what am I going to do with my 26" rims? They'd look like shite on a Subaru.

I've got news for you... they look like crap on an SUV too. Sorry, but it's true.

The only vehicle that looks good with 26" rims is a bicycle.

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[Anonymous Coward]

30" tall? Must be from Lilliput.

Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc

[LordVader717]

I'll try to keep objective when writing this comment, but I am frustrated by people who clearly have no idea of what they are talking about, and try to apply their "knowledge" to existing technologies.

Of course you would have to use energy to melt snow off panels. And obviously you won't want to use it if the energy gain isn't larger.
But by melting a thin layer at the bottom, you would have a flat, wet surface, which would cause the rest of the snow to slide off.
Whether or not it's worth it could be easily calculated by measuring the sunlight and considering the sunlight hours left in a day.

These systems do actually work in winter in cold climates, if maybe not quite so effectively. The reason is that you are using the actual sunlight to heat water, so it doesn't matter what air temperture you have. And when insulated properly, you will have very little energy loss.

Of course you will have less gain in winter, but you are forgetting that people use significant amounts of hot water in summer.
This is where you would see the most gain, and you do not need to be in a hot climate to use it.
Where I live, there are quite a few people who have solar panels on their houses, and it's not a very hot climate.
Solar heating has proven itself possible, and economical in most populated climates. Fact.

twitter

[Anonymous Coward]

Moderators: Please note that "twitter" is a known fanatical sycophant whose obnoxious offtopic rants are legend here on Slashdot. It doesn't matter what the topic is, he'll find a way to scrape in some pointless Microsoft bashing. While nobody expects us to love Microsoft in any way, his particularly tepid style of calling anyone he replies to "troll" or "liar" or "fanboy" because he happens to disagree with whatever they're saying is well documented and should not be rewarded. If anything, twitter is the type of person that should not be part of the open source/free software community. He is an anathema to all that is good about free software.

I'm posting this so that you (the moderator) have some context to consider twitter and not mod him up whenever he posts his filler preformatted rants about installing Knoppix or Mepis or whatever that unfortunately get him karma every single time and allow him to continue posting his trademark toxic crap (read on) day in and day out. You may consider this a troll - I consider it community service. And I ain't kidding.

If you're a /. subscriber, I invite you to look through some of his posting history. I guarantee that you'll be hard pressed to find someone that is more "out there" than twitter. You'll also probably notice he's got quite an AC following. Don't just read his posts, make sure you go through the replies.

To get an idea of what I'm talking about, check this post out. This is an article about email disclaimers. The parent of the post is complaining about the ads in the linked page and so on, and twitter actually goes off on a rant to blame it on Microsoft and recommend Lynx, because "is teh free".

Here's another. In this post twitter not only calls the OP a troll but attempts to "tell it like it is" while making some vague argument about "GNU". Yes, if you're confused, you're not alone. The reply (modded +4) proceeds to simply destroy his bogus argument. You will notice he did not reply. This is what some people call "drive-by advocacy". A sort of I'll just leave you with my thoughts here and move on to the next flamebait kind of deal. In fact, he almost never replies because he knows that his fanatical arguments simply do not hold up to any sort of discussion. It's not that he's chosen the wrong cause - he's just going at it in a completely wrong way.

Here's that drive-by advocacy and FUD in motion: twitter goes on about some topic and then drops the usual "oh and M$ is teh evil" because "WMP phones home" or some such. Called on his FUD, he then claims that WMP stores every song and movie you've ever played in a file, somewhere. Pressed further, he just sort of slithers out of sight, his FUD-spreading complete. This is not about some Microsoft technology that nobody likes anyway; it's about lying for the sake of lying. Way too many of his posts are exactly like this one.

More? Just read though this post and the subsequent replies. I guess this stands on its own. Or these two. Or this one. Or this one.

Still not convinced? This is what twitter considers "humour" while going about his daily "M$" routine.

M