Game Console Energy Usage Comparison

Broadband writes "Modern gaming consoles consume more and more power, dissipate more and more heat and cause a lot more noise with their cooling systems compared to their brethren a decade ago. While it's obvious that an Xbox 360 would have higher energy demands then a Playstation 1, the curious question is by how much? Even more importantly is the question of whether your console might be costing you money while you sleep. Preposterous you say? Actually quite the opposite! We put every console in our lab through rigorous testing to find the answers to these questions and see who the energy hogs really are. "

Comments

Re:Standby Energy Usage

[Distinguished Hero]

The point was that these energy leaks are totally unnecessary. It's not a controversial subject -- almost nobody would argue that it would be nice to have fewer leaked energy.
If you truly want to stop the waste of energy, reducing the energy leaks of PS2s is hardly an efficient way to go about it (in the grand scheme of energy waste).

I'm sure there are probably many MORE conservative/Republican/oil-wealthy/corporate "fatcats" out there as well (you were trying to make a selective attack on "liberals" right?).
Maybe there are, maybe there aren't. I'll admit that I don't have any data as to how much energy each of those segments wastes/consumes. The point is that at least most of the elements that you mentioned do not tell me to reduce my consumption (which is such a infinitesimal fraction of theirs) while jetting around the country wasting more energy that I could in my entire life if I actually tried. But if you must know, I hold all elite elements of American society in contempt.

As for the people in third world countries, I'm embarrassed than an obviously educated person such as yourself would compare energy leaks in rich-people's houses to family size in third world countries.
I did not compare those two to each other. I merely pointed out that those are two things (at opposite ends of certain scales) which waste a lot more energy that all the PS2s in the world.

That is blatantly racist, elitist, and pretty much wrong.
I do not follow your logic. Please elaborate.

I came from a 3rd world country, one of two children.
I came from a 2nd world country (there is such a thing, look it up if you don't believe me). One of one children. Nice to meet you. The fact that your parents did not have 12 children probably played a role in you becoming more educated and potentially immigrating to the West. Each family has access to a finite amount of resources (provided by the two primary providers, the mother and the father). Increasing the number of children reduces the amount of resources per child (unless of course the child can produce (at an early age) more than it takes in, which in most of today's countries is not the case).

We were fortunate, as are you and most Western families.
If Westerners were crapping out children at the same rate that a lot of people in the third world are, we would hardly be as fortunate. The amount of resources is finite. Dividing that finite amount by a larger amount of people results in a lower number (obviously undesirable). This could of course be mitigated if the people born of large families made significant advancements in science and technology, leading to better and more efficient resource use; however, empirical evidence seems to indicate that most people born of large families do not amount to much and their contributions to science and technology usually do not offset the increase in resource consumption.

It has been shown over and over again, that family size often does not follow "rational" patters that should in theory correlate with wealth.
Perhaps because nobody takes it upon themselves to educate people in these matters.

In fact, more often it correlates with religion,
No doubt. Following your link we see that Muslim (and to a lesser extent African Roman Catholic) countries dominates the top fertility list.

need for able-bodied workers,
A lot of the countries in question are unable to feed themselves and need the West to send them food to maintain their population size. It does not seem that the increase in able-bodied workers has helped much. There is an explination in macroeconomic theory of this, which says that a proportional increase in both labour and capital is required to just maintain the same standard of living. Increases in standard of living are usually accomplished by increases in efficiency (technology).