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The Insatiable Power Hunger of Home Electronics
An anonymous reader writes "A Wall Street Journal columnist recently got his hand on a power meter and decided to write about his findings, the resulting article being discussed here on Slashdot. That author concluded that gadgets are getting a bad rap, and are relatively insignificant power consumers in the grand scheme of things. A rebuttal has appeared, arguing that not only are modern electronics significant power consumers already, while everything else is becoming more efficient, home electronics seem to be getting worse. This echoes the Department of Energy's assertion that 'Electricity consumption for home electronics, particularly for color TVs and computer equipment, is also forecast to grow significantly over the next two decades.' Are gadgets unfairly maligned, or getting an unearned pardon?"
In general, an LCD TV is 2x more energy efficient than a CRT. Modern dual-core processors are more energy efficient then older processors. However, as with all gains in efficiency, we're using MANY more of them. That's just what happens.
"In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." -- Carl Sagan, Cosmos
I received an ammeter for Christmas, and I went around my flat finding just how much current these things draw. For reference, the voltage delivered is 125VAC. I'll put out the wattage instead of current drawn.
Cell phone charger: 10W
Washing machine: 790W
Computer: 240W
LCD monitor: 90W
IP telephone: 20W (!!!!!)
42" Hi-def plasma display: 190W
Crazy. That would explain why my light bill is 80 pounds per month!!
I think it's more regional than anything else. The current definition of National household electricity consumption is, in effect, an average of household electricity consumption in different regions across the United States and is affected by many factors. However, hot summers increase the amount of electricity used for air conditioning and other space cooling, so households in southern States will tend to use more electricity. Similarly, cold winters increase the amount of energy used for space heating. Although U.S. households more frequently rely on natural gas than on electricity for heating, in the South the reverse is true, meaning that households in southern States will tend to have a peak of electricity use in winter as well as in summer.
Humidity is another climate-related factor that affects electricity consumption. Households in more humid regions tend to use air-conditioners and dehumidifiers to remove humidity. Households in arid regions, such as the Mountain States, are able to use evaporative coolers instead of air-conditioning for space cooling.
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Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
So, who is right? The WSJ or the article referenced? Actually both.
The article referenced talks about the trends for energy consumption. And, in that respect, the consumer electronics win hands down, since more and more people buy computers, flat-screen TVs and assorted electronic gadgets. On the other hand, the WSJ is right, since the overall energy consumption of these gadgets is still a very small fraction of the total.
One thing that I'd personally like to do soon would be to compare the electricity used by all my computers (6 and counting, including a big Sun workstation, 3 laptops, a modem/router, a wireless access point, a laser printer, etc) vs the overall electricity usage in my home. I have relatively modern equipment, and I am currently switching everything to low-power equipment.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Never mind... It's the summary that reads like a dupe.
Reminds me John Stewart's coverage of how Fox News uses "Questions": "Does John Murtha's push for withdrawl encourage terrorists and insurgents to increase the number of attacks on our troops in Iraq?"
I was wondering how many "dupe!!" posts there would be. I was going to post and theorize about it, because it isn't a dupe. If you RTFS, you'd see it references the link that you posted. The story is a REACTION to that previous slashdot story. Thanks for playing.
Nope. It's a response to the article you linked to. The article you linked to was also linked to by the submitter. Things have gotten REALLY bad when people can't even be bothered to read the first sentence of the summary.
Download my free songs!
Sure they might run instant on feature that takes some current drain 24x7 so they can do a warm start. Or a clock.
Chase down the Off-Grid living web sites and you'll soon find that one of the biggest problems people have when they first try to do off grid is all their appliances that drain just a little power all night long, leaving insufficient power for the morning routines.
I have three digital clocks in my kitchen, two in my entertainment center... I don't own a watch anymore because I realized that there is no place except the bathroom that I can stand in my house and not see a clock face. And I don't own any clocks!
The need for everything to have a digital clock and instant on takes up a lot more power then you think. Turn everything off and go look at your meter. it's still chugging along rather nicely. We could do much better if we dropped the clocks and dropped the instant on. Tube televisions took minutes to warm up. Solid State televisions take a few seconds to warm up. Instant On only saves me 3 seconds at most.
He's absolutely right. Ignoring AC costs, IMO its house size that is causing the increase in usage, and its changes in how houses are lit. 20 years ago houses were lit typically with a single fixture in a room, and lamps. (Or, if you're in the northeast US, typically just lamps, although I couldn't tell you why that is...)
These days lighting design is all the rage, and its common to have 4 or more fixtures in a room, often R30 can lights at 65w each projecting downward so you need 4 or more to light a room. The room I'm in right now visiting my parents has 4 can lights, a light with 4 60 watt bulbs in it, and two recessed spot lights of unknown power. Ignoring those, its still 500 watts to light this room.
My house is 60+ years old, but was renovated six years ago -- most of it is can lit as well. It has 24 65 watt R30 can lights in it, among all the other lights.
I saw a nearly $30 a month drop in my electric bill switching the entire house to CFL. Dimmable R30 bulbs are pricey, $12+ each, but they will have payed themselves off in a year. I typically am facist about keeping lights off, too... I'm sure the savings would be double that if I had kids leaving them on all the time.
On a geek note, I also got a $30 savings a month by making changes in the data center in the basement. An old HP rack server was replaced with a much less power hungry desktop box which was faster... that saved 75% of the electricity it used to use. Three other desktop boxes which were slower were replaced with two free laptops with broken screens I got from friends who tend to break their laptops. The upside as well is that one small UPS can power everything for almost an hour.
Peripheral Power control with screen saver4 /
http://www.instructables.com/id/EE62QUOM31EUOJJVA
saves a few pennies here and there.....
Dirty Pirate Hooker
When we first got a TV (1988), the TV had a power switch, five channels and definitely no remote. So, whenever we didn't need the TV, we just switched off the power and turned it on when we needed it.
When 1999 dawned, the TV was a flat screen 25" with a remote. And lo, we would turn off the power for the TV only when we left the house (locked up) or at night. And that was just because my house was on the very top of a hill and power lines were often hit by lightning (yeah, I had my modem explode once).
And finally, now in 2006 (in a different city), I have six things plugged in - from DVD player to the TV itself. And it is such a big mess that nobody ever unplugs anything at all - just use the remote to turn it on & off. That sleep mode does take a fair bit of power (well, tens of watts) which is just going to an absolute waste (well, heating the room).
It is these un-noticed devices which suck a constant, but econonomically neglible drain - which could be avoided. The things you can fix aren't always the biggest consumers (water heaters, refrigerator) but small things like these - in a global level.
It is not just such permanently on stuff that you have - the average geek still has more connectors than you'd think. I realized this when I was in the high himalayas - and we were charging stuff before we left human habitation. (Oh, took the laptop to 18,000 feet).
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
This is just supply & demand, as the demand for more power efficient
electronics grows then companies will be driven to supply them.
I'm a rabbit startled by the headlights of life
A friend of mine rents a loft in my house and he asked me to check out why his part
of our power bill was so much greater (he now has a meter). Turns out his standby
power on all his devices is half of his total average power draw. They are on all the
time, after all, whereas the bigegr items are used mkore rarely. He also has more
gizmos than you can shake a stick at. To sum thar up: when he's away from the house
on vacation or whatever, with TVs and compuetrs off, his power draw is still at 50% of
the noraml amount. For what's it's worth...
Maxim'
1) Off buttons that really turn off the power, not just put the device in a 'standby mode'.
2) Manufacturers should be obliged to make low-voltage devices have transformers internal(and wired after the power switch), and make those really annoying power bricks you now get with everything illegal.
Apart from usually being a ridiculous single-piece design that occludes several other sockets in a power strip, they cause massive cable tangles and practical use requires that they be left permanently powered-on.
...my computer is using a lot more power than before - then again, it didn't play back HDTV or very impressive 3D games before either. And my last TV, well it's a lot bigger and thus draws a lot more watts than my last one. Compare that to a washing machine - it washes my clothes, they get clean. Two thumbs up for that, I don't need one spinning twice as fast. I must admit, I don't think energy efficiency when I look at power draw, I think cooling and noise - sitting in front of a computer is hardly an expensive hobby (or at least not because of the electricity bill). If I could get a computer with same price, same power, twice the powerdraw and fanless/SSD I'd get one in a heartbeat. All the options are either notoriously expensive (quiet hardware), cumbersome (cables and closet) or underpowered (thin front-end boxes). But in no case have I thought "This would use too much power"
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Do Tesla coils count as home electronics?
I don't want Karma, I just want to be a smart ass. All in favor, mod me up.
Something central to human psychology. The more we have of something, the more we use. It's why supply and demand works, why scarce things are valuable.
Deleted
I am bulding my own house, and early on my wife and I agreed on a lighting policy. The
idea is to have low-level lighting for navigation putposes, with task lighting for extra
illiumination right where you need it (desk lamps, light in the cosmetic area, closet lgiths
& cabinet lights on door siwtches, a light in the shower on a timer, etc).
Of course, since I'm building the house myself, right now all we have are drop lights hooked to
extension coords! At least there are floursecent bulbs in those drop lights!
Maxim
I admit it, I now have more gadgets drawing current than I did five years ago. I have also reduced power consumption in the past five years. Five years ago, my typical electric bill was US $125 a month, it is now in the $75 range. None of the changes have caused any hardships or reduction in quality of life.
1. Replaced heat pump with a more efficient model and installed set back thermostat. I lucked out, the compressor crapped out and I had a service policy. The impact on quality of life is nil, I had to learn the new thermostat.
2. Replaced refrigerator with a more efficient model. It was expensive but the old refrigerator was about 30 years old and was reaching the end of it's service life. It is a nicer refrigerator than the old one and it is quieter.
3. Replaced commonly used light bulbs with compact fluorescent. This was an inexpensive change and it had the most impact on quality of life. The color and light quality of the new compact fluorescents compares to the old lights but they take a few minutes to produce full light output. They remind me of a tube type radio warming up.
I think that the most interesting replacements were the night lights. I replaced the 6 night lights that used to draw about 4 watts each with LEDs. I connected a wall wart to an unused wire pair in my home telephone wiring and I use the phone wiring to transport power to my night light LEDs. I had the wall wart, LEDs, and other parts in my junk box -- and they work great.
The light conversion is both saving power used for lighting and reducing the summer air conditioning load. Someday I might even figure out how long it will take to save any money by replacing those lights. The main light in the living room was a 300 watt halogen torchiere which I replaced with three fluorescent flood lights which cost $35 for a new floor lamp and bulbs, rated power consumption went from 300 watts down to about 75 watts; and I frequently don't turn on all three of the bulbs. This summer I noticed that the living room was much cooler with the new lights. The kitchen is saving a similar amount of watts but the lights in the kitchen are not used very often.
This article has COMPLETELY missed the point.
Consumer electronics do increasingly contribute to a home's electric budget, but only by virtue of quantity. Except for PCs and TVs, most products draw a pittance. For PCs, they did draw more and more power from the mid-80s to a year or two ago, but newer CPUs have finally addressed that problem (and power supplies have gotten more efficient as well). For TVs, larger means more power, but the tech has drastically improved... A 50" plasma draws comparable to a 30" old-style CRT, and LCDs drop that by another 80% or so.
The real power-hungry devices in most homes haven't changed in 50 years... Refridgerator, electric stove/oven, electric clothesdryer, electric water heater, AC, electric heat (so bad that you virtually never see it in places that actually get cold). Simply cooking dinner every night on an electric stovetop puts every high-tech toy in the house combined to shame for power draw.
My TV has a power button, which works as a hard power button. There's also the TV remote, which puts the TV into the "soft-off" state where it's ready to turn on, but not exactly off. That's not all - when there's a power failure, the TV turns on as soon as power is restored. Given the size of the TV, I guess the manufacturer thought it would be used as a Kiosk where it needed to be always on rather than being used at home.
I guess it's no worse than the "Wake on Modem" that's enabled by default in the computer bios.
So what you think is the big user (kettle) is about the same as the microwave.
...but what about my george foreman grill!?
You constantly struggle for self improvement - and it shows.
Hooray for bad Engrish on fortune cookies
The heat generated by my computer is cosy now during winter. I assume it's the same for all gadgets to some extent. Of course, this becomes a nuisance come summer...
A Wall Street Journal columnist
Cool, you establish the lack of credibility with the first sentence; that's very convenient.
Your LCD monitor: "90W".
Do you know that Philips makes some of the most efficient LCD monitors? I have a 19" model that consumes 34W of power.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
One thing that really annoys me is that most televisions, DVD players, VCRs, game consoles, etc lose their data and have to have some level of reconfiguration on start-up if you hard kill their power. I'd love to be able to put all that crap on a power strip that I could flip everything on, or off, at once on and save some power when I don't need them. It doesn't cost all that much more (a couple dollars) to build such items to retain such information when cut off from power - most companies just don't bother. As far as I know there isn't even any label for the consumer to look for to know which items would retain such information.
For that matter why does every device in my house require configuration? IMO I don't even need a real tv anymore - cut out the tuner and pretty much all options and just make it work as a monitor for whatever devices are plugged into it. If everything needs to know the time then why don't we design them all to use the atomic time as broadcast or design homes to broadcast their own time signal. Why do I need to configure everything to know what everything else is? Have the tv and devices attached to it auto-sense each other and auto-configure properly. (And off-topic, but related, why do we need so many cords? Can't we figure out how to send power and data on the same single cord so I don't need twenty cables behind my damn tv?)
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
land line wired phone without any bells & whistles and it'll consume zero watts until you take it off the hook.
And the watts it DOES consume are taken from the telephone company line, not your house's power.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
My Creative Labs computer speakers draw 75% power of the "on" when supposedly turned "off". The power adapter for it is always hot. Lots of little devices like this are each costing $10-20 per year in electricity when not in use. It starts to add up. Multiply that across a nation, and that's a huge amount of wasted electricity, as well as pollution. Electricity companies aren't charities, but we're giving them more money for no reason than a lot of people give to charity. I'm sure if people turned their thermostats up in summer and down in winter, and dressed appropriately for the season, then bigger savings could be made than just unplugging unused devices. It would be nice if power sockets here in N. America came fitted with individual on/off switches, as is standard in the UK - these devices could continue to live plugged in to the wall, but with their consumption more easily controlled.
I'd venture that LED lighting in the home will become mainstream within the next 10 years. Given that lightbulbs make up about 33% of a home's power consumption & they will be going from 40-100 watts a piece to 2-6 watts, isn't the complaining about gadgets power draw a little
So long as our power generation is cyclical when it comes to CO2, it really doesn't matter what we spend the energy doing. Getting to solar, wind & biofuel generation is a real target, not making a phone recharger more intelligent.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
I've dropped my electricity consumption by more than half. This chart on my blog shows my total KWHs consumed over five years.
Sure, I replaced incandescent bulbs with CFLs when I moved in. So where is the savings? I optimized things like computers and then "insignificant, low-power" devices.
I'd love to see this journalist's KWHs per year over the past 5 years. I've love to see how many KWH he consumes a month. Perhaps given his waste, a savings of 100 KWH/month is insignificant.
Some people think that saving $200 a year in electricity is just about the same as saving nothing - because saving less than $20 per month is not worth thinking about. But for me, saving $200 a year is significant, and I don't mind if I have to do it in $17 increments over 12 months.
(note: I have a natural gas dryer, hot water heater, furnace, and oven)
IP phones are just for geeks and serve no useful purpose over normal phones
Ahh - there is nothing like the smell of a troll in the morning! That statement is just so ridiculous it's not worth responding to.
My polycom 601 (a high-end business phone) only takes 6.21W. If your IP phone REALLY takes 20W, I would consider replacing it. That, or your meter is whacked.
you could try those new flourescent bulbs. They fit into any regular incandescent plug,the lighting looks like incandescent,and they use 25% as much power in the 60W(brightness) bulbs.
where did you find the dimmable R-30s (and do they have r-40s) I've been looking to replace the 7 in this room and the ones in the living room
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Next step is VMWare/Xen, and downsizing a couple of stray servers. This is when some sort of power-generation scheme for the home begins to look attractive. Thermoelectric materials near the stove/shower/fireplace would seem to be a good start, but probably not for anything larger than a CFL or two.
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
Not true. We use vonage and save a lot of money over regular landline services. Using their $25/month package we get unlimited local and national calls, plus free calls to the major European countries. Prior to this we needed a local carrier, a national carrier and then international calls on top of this. Our bills varied between $80-100 a month. We have a lot of family in Europe, and call them a lot, they also used to call us a lot. But with our vonage package we always call them back immediately and save them a not too small sum on their telephone bills too. For some reason vonage fail to mention the free European calls in their TV ads. I'm sure they'd pick up a lot of business if they did.
We could probably find even cheaper IP telephony alternatives, but I don't feel the need. Connecting the vonage box to any phone socket in the house has all the phones working like a regular landline PSTN system.
Not all my PCs have had this, but most PSUs I've used have 2 plugs in them: one to get power from the wall outlet, another to power the screen. If I were to connect the screen to some other source and keep more peripherals running off of the computer's PSU, that would probably shut them down as the computer goes to sleep, right? I'm thinking of speakers, printer, scanner, ie: all the stuff that doesn't do anything when the PC sleeps/is off.
The Wall Street Journal is right (for once). The vast majority any house's electrical costs are Heating-Air Conditioning, and Water heating (baring designs using solar water heaters, and below ground air conditioning, I acknowledge that you exist, but let's face it, you're far less than 1% of the population). If electrical usage is rising, its the fault of the rise of McMansions, and generally larger housing in general. Most housing in the US is poorly designed and piss-poor insulated, with dozens of windows. All of which add hugely to HAC. Windows in particular are a huge elephant of electricity costs, especially the huge ones popular today, built with no consideration at all about where the sun is going to be at different seasons.
It's a data-logging power meter. Looks pretty sweet, and hard data beats anything you hear on Slashdot.
Anybody know if there's a Linux front-end for this puppy, or do I have to try to knock something together?
While it was a well written and reasoned article, he forgets that he spends a lot of time and money keeping the rest of his house low on the power usage. Most Americans still use their 2 decade old appliances and incandescent bulbs. Assuming that the average household's appliances are twice as power hungry that brings 30% towards TV and PC down below 18% of the bill. But I wouldn't be surprised if if most people's appliances are much more thirsty than that. And what about an electric range?
In the article, author admits 11W additional power consumption for running SETI@Home.
Wikipedia says there are 1.2 million active users, meaning 11W*1.200.000 = 14MW of ADDITIONAL power consumption for SETI@Home. Take into account that many people leave computers on JUST for SETI, and you could go up to 170MW (based on article power consumption). The real number is somewhere in between.
Now, multiply that by 30*24h, and you get 9.5GWh/120GWh respectively. That is almost 1M$/12M$ PER MONTH. Huh?
I hope the little green men will show themselves fast.
From the article theorizing that home electronic power usage seems to be getting worse:
We could probably save the Earth a little more if we didn't do one to two loads of dishes a day, and if we didn't wash a dozen loads of laundry a week, but hey, that's modern life with small children. These are luxuries of modern living that I'm going to clutch onto until the ocean is lapping at the door.
I wonder if his kids and grandkids will feel similarly about Dad's attitude?!
Don't get me wrong, the guy seems to be doing more than most people. My point is that we are not "entitled" to lives of such "luxuries" (his word) as we kill off species and, indeed, the entire planet.
We have a helluva lot of change to do -- either willingly or it'll be forced on us -- and most of that change needs to occur between our ears.
I have a 2.5GHz P4 with 1GB of memory and 4 HDD as well as two 21" CRT monitors.
After 10 minutes in sleep mode it all consumes 5W.
1. PC It runs 24/7, and consumes 43kWh or $6 a year.
2. Clothes drier runs 6 hours a week at 4kW thats 416kWh or $60 a year
3. PC when CPU doing actual work sucks 147W thats 1300kWh or $206 a year. When I discovered this, I immediately disabled the protein folding project my PC was participating in.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
Quite timely this, as I've just finished my own energy page, testing loads of appliances. If there's one thing I've found above all else though, it's this one thing:
Heat swamps Light swamps Sound
(here's the article I did on it)
Anything which involves heat (washing machine, heater, cooker, microwave, kettle etc.) will eat an order of magnitude more power than anything involving light (monitor/TV, light bulb, lamp), which itself will eat up (by an order of magnitude) anything involving sound, which you practically get for free.
That's okay though, because if you spend $3,500,000 on space-age aerogel insulation for your home, then practically no heat will be lost, and your energy bills will plummet.
The other thing I learnt is that standby power consumption vastly varies from device to device (and even from manufacturer), which is why ideas such as the "One Watt Plan" are a Good Thing.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
I live in Houston, where every building is air-conditioned to somewhere in the 68-70F region during the summer. Everyone thinks it's too cold, but by some Divine Decree, that's the temperature indoors. At home, we have our thermostat set at 78 during the summer. Assuming an average (over a 24-hour period) temperature of 88 degrees, that means we're saving roughly half of our A/C costs by using 78 instead of 68 or 70F. As temperatures fall, that number increases dramatically.
What really hit me was when we took a trip to Utah in October. Outside temperature: about 40F. Inside temperature: close to 80F. If they set the temperature down to 68F, they would save some 25% of their heating costs.
So Houston is colder in the summer than Utah is in the winter. Go figure.
Help find a cure for cancer. Join the [H]orde
i remember reading about a proposed dc bus in pop sci some years ago that really grabbed my imagination. basically, in your house, along with the 120 vac outlets, there would be connections for +/-12vdc and +5vdc -- the most common voltages for analog and digital electronics.
the horribly stupid situation we've gotten ourselves into is that now we have a myriad transformers in our houses. i can think of five that are currently plugged in right now in this room. put your hand on one of these -- that heat is wasted electricity.
the thing that should be investigated, i suppose is whether one big power supply is more efficient than a bazillion little ones . . .
also, electronics required 9vdc, eg, will still need to convert the 12vdc, and newer cpu cores use 3.3vdc....
the cool thing about an installed dc bus means that a small solar power system to drive it would become quite economical -- a solar cell and a battery, and you could power a good percentage of your electronic gadgetry.
mr c
"Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it." - R. Feynman
My apartment has some narrow light fixtures from the 30s or 40s. Even the "small" CFL lights Just Don't Fit. It's not a matter of diameter so much as of length. If someone can find me a short CFL, I'd be thrilled.
-b.
It's not just size. 60 years ago, your entire electrical appliance list probably consisted of a toaster, a television, a radio, and a clothes iron. You didn't have three televisions, thee DVD players, two TIVOs, two (or more) computers, two external hard drives, a home theater receiver, four cell phone chargers, a laptop charger, three CD players, a breadmaker, baby monitors, three hair curlers, two hair dryers, an air conditioner, and about a hundred other things.
The NEC has constantly revised the electrical loads to provide more and more outlets precisely because people use more and more electrical devices over time. It's just how things go.
On an unrelated note, I've tried using CFLs in my house for about four years. I still can't find a model where the color doesn't make me want to vomit.
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
It would be a good idea to have government standardize power bricks, make them all provide same voltage and use same plug. This way we can easily replace them or buy a big brick to power all the little gadgets. It would be nice to have your house and office wired with "gadget plugs" so you don't have to carry all these damn bricks everywhere.
HTML is obsolete. It's time for a new, simpler and richer markup language.
The big problem in North America is the sheer number of things like apartments with air conditioning -- but NO timer. The typical person in the summer goes to work, and leaves the AC on when no one's at home. This wastes tremendous amounts of power. But people just forget to turn it off when they go. An easy to use timer would fix this problem.
I always tried to remember to turn off my AC. When I left the apartment, the power company mistakenly sent me a bill some time after I left - and I noticed the next person to live in the apartment was using *three times* the electricity that I did - presumably because they left the AC on all day (The power company, First Choice power, previously Texas-New Mexico Power put nice little graphs on the bill so it was really obvious).
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First, these are Volt-Amps, not necessarily Watts. National Grid is going to charge you for Watts. The "Watts=VoltsxAmps" formula only works for 100% resistive loads or DC. On AC, you have to adjust for reactive power.
With the (notable) exception of the washing machine, those appliances should be using very little reactive power. They're converting AC to DC straightaway, which will give you a nearly unity power factor. Assuming that the washing machine is lagging the current by 30 deg or so (SWAG), you're talking about 87% or so of its measured Volt-Amps being "real."
The computer's switching power supply may inject a few odd harmonics, but I doubt they're very large.
I've replaced all the sockets in my place with ones that have switches. Rather than unplug the phone charger, replug it, etc. I just flick the switch. This is much more convenient than having to muck about with the chord all the time.
My entertainment 'center' (TV, radio, two laptops (one acting as a PVR), cable modem, router) all go into a single extension cord that also has a switch. This saves having a large socket block, makes it easy to turn all devices on/off with one switch, and keeps me from having to walk over to the socket to flick the switch there.
There's numerous advantages - from power savings, to peace of mind when going out for a while. No worrying about my TV blowing up, etc. When going on vacation, I just flick the mains switches at the meter - same effect.
The only disadvantage I had found is with the clocks on everything. They keep resetting and either blink 00:00 or end up being some oddball hour. I taped them off. I suppose some might find the switches on the socket plates ugly - haven't heard any comment on them.
In the past, though, I couldn't have done this. TVs, radios, VCRs would not have remembered their settings, and I would have had to re-program them. What a pain when coming back from vacation that was.
For the curious: my consumption is currently at 23% of average for my area (couple of house blocks), the investment has already paid off.
And as others have pointed out, it's lighting and HVAC that make all the difference. Think of it this way: at my 20 cents, a 100-watt bulb on for ten hours a day costs about $6 a month. That's one bulb. In a big house, you might have 75 or more bulbs. And that's just for lighting. Switch to compact flourescent; I even like the light quality better now.
After Peak oil hits in 2008, without any real alternatives, we'll either not be using our devices much, or we'll be looking at them through the haze of many more coal-fired power plants.
I am the Lorvax, I speak for the machines.
I saw a nearly $30 a month drop in my electric bill switching the entire house to CFL.
Canadian Football League ?
The question I have is whether the statistics take into a account the proliferation of gadgets. I don't think that new electronics consume anymore power than older electronics. As many people have already stated, they tend to be more efficient. However, if the avereage household, for example, has gone from 1 TV to 3, then obviously the consumption by electronics go up. Unless the efficiency goes up proportionally. While components are generally more efficient now than in the past, the effieciency rate probably does not equal the growth rate.
... easy to read and understand power readings of how much they are using. It would also be nice if every device LCD display of how much power it was consuming.
I think the fact that consumers are divorced from the knowledge and consequences besides simply the more abstract monetary consequences may be a important factor in wasted power.
With the move to HD, one of the proposed solutions was HAVi over Firewire. Basically, each device would have a firewire port (well, two so you daisy chain), you run the daisy chain between the devices, and they provide their interface via Java.
The studios HATED it, because it meant their content was moving around the network digitally (in MPEG-2), which was the point. Want to record something to D-VHS or AVHDD, just choose to record it. The devices tell everyone that they record. No more PVR, or if you got a PVR, it's just software, and can dump to an AVHDD system. The whole thing was encrypted for DRM purposes, but the studios hated it. They loved Component/DVI because nobody could make a direct digital copy (too much space needed, would need to compress). The consumer electronics companies hated it, because it meant you'd have a single MPEG-2 decoder in your television (or receiver, then run Component/DVI to the monitor which would have no knowledge), and everyone else made cheap stuff. There is no room for a "better" DVD player if all the DVD player does is read the MPEG-2 stream and send it over firewire.
So instead, we are in a digital domain, we have lots of codecs, and everyone needs to do D/A conversions (to support components). The problems people have with HDMI are short-term (hopefully), but the CE companies know that if all they do is serve the bits off the disc, and don't do anything to make the picture better (quality digital/analog conversions mattering in DVD/component land, but not in DVD/HDMI land), there is no room for higher end models. Moving digital bits around is unimpressive, and there are only two parts of the system that convert to "analog," the receiver (for audio to go out to speakers), and the monitor... and now most of the high end monitors are "digital" devices, so no D/A to upgrade, but how they process the signal matters, because eventually YOU are looking at the analog (light wave) output of your digital set.
Part of the reason that we're seeing a massive drop in CE prices is that there is a decreasing benefit to quality systems. If you look at projectors, Panasonic is playing with smoothing technologies to gain an edge, because the convention edge is somewhat neutralized when digital data comes in and then powers an LCD (or DLP) system. Regarding the devices talking, Firewire was the correct technology. What's PATHETIC is that we carry SO MUCH data on the HDMI cable (up to 1080p video, up to 8 channels of 24-bit audio), but no control information. If you want automation, you're stuck with IR blasters (retarded), macro'ing remotes (slow and annoying), or a central automation control that runs RS-232 cables for serial control. The other option is a DC "trigger" where we have the fancy, high tech solution of sending a small amount of energy from device A to B, and B does "something."
On the plus side with HDMI, and cheaper analog to digital converters, we're seeing more receivers that can "upconvert" old RCA Video, S-Video, and Component signals into digital easily. While videophiles may not want their receiver doing video conversion (on the believe that the monitor should... and high end display devices probably do a better job of handling the signal), we're AT LEAST at the point that if you set the receiver to the right input, the "television" is truly a monitor only needing one input, and the trigger to turn it on and off can work. If you want to avoid the receiver based solution, there are plenty of component video switchers (that also switch digital audio, coax or toslink), that autosense what device is on. My dad used to use a receiver with multiple sourcing because he could record a DVD to audio cassette for the car, while running a VCR through the system for the television/stereo, but I don't know of anyone that does that any more, few people convert to analog sources, and they normally do their copying on the computer, not in the AV cabinet with the asinine inter
From a modern macroeconomic viewpoint Say's Law is subject to dispute. John Maynard Keynes and many other critics of Say's Law have paraphrased it as saying that "supply creates its own demand". Under this definition, once a producer has created a supply of a product, consumers will inevitably start to demand it. This interpretation allowed for Keynes to introduce his alternative perspective that "demand creates its own supply" (up to, but not beyond, full employment). Some call this "Keynes' law".
However, these detractors, at the very least, have an argument.
(Or, if you're in the northeast US, typically just lamps, although I couldn't tell you why that is...)
Having grown up in the northeast, I'll take a shot at this one. Many homes and apartment buildings here are relatively old. As such, many are built using plaster and lathe instead of sheetrock to cover walls. With this type of construction, adding outlets along the baseboard is a relatively simple operation while adding light fixtures in the middle of a ceiling borders on the impossible without replacing the plaster (or molded tin!). I think that even as newer construction came along, the infrastructure (e.g., Lamp Stores) was geared toward lamps over fixtures and availability dictated style.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
I do not understand on all the debates about energy conservation. I agree that savings on electricity bills is good but shouldn't we worry about making electricity production possible on a larger scale and cheaper. After all http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale
I got an LCD recently, too, and thought it was like yours. Turns out there's an option buried in the onscreen menus that allows you to choose between a 14w instant-on standby and a half-watt standby with a longer startup time.
It's still on faster than my old CRT, so I'm quite happy to use the low-power standby mode.
Mine's one of those cheapo Westinghouse units, so your mileage may vary.
Is it possible that both are correct? I have measured everything in my house (that has a standard plug) except for my fridge. I know it's a hog, no point in measuring. I have 5 computers, at least 2 of which are always running. I have a dozen small gadgets with wall warts to power them. And I have several UPSes, one of which is a power conditioner. My conclusion is that most of these devices are very power efficient, mostly consuming only several watts each. The computers are like running a lightbulb. Apart, none of these things sucks much power at all, especially compared to the fridge or the clothes dryer. But once you add them all up, the sheer number of googaws in the house sum up to a significant consumption of power. Granted, I have much more crap than your average person, but I think this summation effect may have some significance for your average person these days, if to a lesser extent.
That might be a good candidate for LEDs.
Man, you really need that seminar!
I'll bet you $100 that a car at idle while sitting in the driver produces CO2.
1000bulbs.com has a good selection of CFLs, including dimmable ones.
No idea on the power useage here, but the east side of OR or WA really can't be called mild. Still snow left on ground from last week :( Majority do live on the west side, but maybe we make up for the power use on the other side ;) Or maybe Bill Gates is messing up our average ;p
;)
You are probably right, power under $.10 Kwh (.078 in Vancouver!) soo we don't pay as much as much attention to use as others.
Of course i am making up for several people on the other side with a vintage stereo sucking up 1000 watts or so plus my other toys
I can understand that the processing power is now much higher than some years ago, but still, looks like nobody really cares much about the power demands of these because what really sells are the meaner and faster machines.
20 years ago you could get a Hewlett Packard HP-11C calculator that lasted (yes, it's true) 10-15 YEARS with a set of 3 cell sized batteries.
Still some 10 years ago you could get an HP-200LX, a complete MS-DOS portable system, that lasted easily 1 month on 2AA batteries (I'm talking about a small laptop computer here).
For more information try http://www.hpmuseum.org/
It's difficult to find these ones for sale, but try here for Europe http://www.rpncalcs.com/
Has anyone found a powerstrip with individual power switches for each outlet? Ideally one that you can keep in plain sight so that you don't have to reach below something to switch things off? The prongs on power supplies are surprisingly weak so I don't want to pull them out every time I don't use them but every power strip I use have only one switch for all the outlets, not one per power supply (that I want to disable when not in use)
Here's one source:
= 535&item=340464&prDeTab=2#A
http://www.samsclub.com/shopping/navigate.do?catg
$28 (USD) for a 3-pack is not such a bad price. The only thing I haven't found is the color temperature of these bulbs. I already have some CFLs that are 2700K and some that are 3000K. I find the 2700K to look a bit dim while the 3000K look brighter. (I am talking about perception, not actual light output)
What I really want are 3000K dimmable reflector (R30, R40, PAR38, BR30, etc.) CFLs for a reasonable price. In the mean time, I often use a CFL in a floor lamp instead of the recessed lights in the living room.
Yeah! Now your home the flickery, spotty-spectrum lighting of an industrial warehouse! That must feel warm and comforting.
Screw CFL. Give me full-spectrum lighting. It costs more. It uses more power. It doesn't last as long. And it is still much much better than CFL.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
It would be nice if power sockets here in N. America came fitted with individual on/off switches, as is standard in the UK - these devices could continue to live plugged in to the wall, but with their consumption more easily controlled.
Unfortunately the design of most power adapters means you can't reach the switch while they're plugged in anyway.
CFL's use a fraction of the power of their incandescent counterparts. LED's use a fraction of the power of CFL's, and LED's are instant on. Is anyone out there using LED "bulbs" and can report on their friendliness/where to get them?
>That statement is just so ridiculous it's not worth responding to.
Meaning you can't think of a response but you wanted to karma whore anyway.
The campaigns for energy waste from electronics are about the same thing global warming is. It's about how much money you can make off of the dumbest consumers in the world, mainly the Americans, who will pay any tax with the word "environment" in it. New taxes on electronics that use over X watts are already a done deal.
No, It means that your statement was so insanely stupid that there is no point wasting my time trying to educate you, and is why you were moderated down. Maybe some day you will figure it out, but I doubt it.
I've been in the UK for the last four weeks. I can't say that I've had a problem with reaching any of the power switches in the sockets. Maybe it's the design of the standard UK that forces things like power bars to be laid-out better. Even the huge great wall-wart (one of the biggest I've seen for a while) for the Linksys WAG54G router I'm using to access this web site still leaves the switch 90% exposed.
With power bars, it's a matter of putting them in a position where you can reach them, and with UK plugs at least, it's easy to label them too (they generally have a big flat surface with the cable coming out the bottom parallel to the wall, unlike the standard 2-/3-prong N.American plugs). I think when I get back to Canada, I will make more of an effort to organise the powerbars around my computers so that things that need to remain on are connected to different bars to the ones that can be turned off... then I can turn things off in batches.
I went to Germany in the summer for the World Cup. It was bloody hot. You adapt and get used to it though. When I got back to N. America, I found everywhere too bloody cold! I was California for work in late July, and found I had to set the thermostat in the hotel room to 78-80 or I'd be too cold at night time. This from the person who normally can't sleep if it's too warm. To be honest, I think it's healthier too to experience seasonal temperature differences - that's what we've evolved to be used to. All this sterilising nature and making things the same all year around can't be good physically or mentally.
Appliances Hog More Energy Than High-Tech Gadgets
The message from the editors of Slashdot is clear:
"Don't read Slashdot. Not even the editors do."
I guess you haven't heard of conducting plastic. :D
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Here's an idea:
Make a UPS that has several 120VAC outlets as normal, but also mini-plugs that put out low-voltage DC (5V, 12V, 9V, just pick one). Then have it power them up only when something is plugged in.
Wouldn't it save some energy to have all the conversion done at one place, and all to the same DC voltage?
Last time i checked , my clock uses 1 cell AA , it lasts >8 months. Its rechargable in under 2 hrs.
Now we can have better designed electronics for instant ON, that doesnt use grid power, i mean its really simple but no damn
electronic engineer will make it, why not!?>!?
1. use a rechargable small cell that recharges when running normally
2. when in standby mode, use a relay to CUT all power, and run off the battery
3. have an optional smart deep sleep mode that will do a timed hard sleep between 2am to 6am, is that so hard to make an option?
4. Like wise, make a sleep during work time option, 8am to 5pm mode. One damn little 3 switch for sleep1/none/sleep2.
Companies should realise that sure for one person, saving 3W * 24hrs * 365days = $2.50 a year, but multiplied by millions of unit sales
that equals to a lot of carbon emissions.
Maybe govts should give companies a tax credit if their appliance use ZERO power during standby, not 500mw, but zero. Its not hard
to put in a $3 rechargable cell in. Give easy external replacement like a remote control, but at the front of a machine and bingo.
One more grip, those cheap chineese dvd players/setop boxes, I really hate how when you go into standby mode, they 'forget' their current channel/video input/settings
selections. So when you turn on again they have to be re-set. Because of this most people now dont turn those machines off ever. Stupid chineese engineers, grrrr. Dont you
learn from your competition?
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
He excludes air conditioning from his measure. He uses expensive CF light bulbs everywhere. He has a new high-efficiency furnace fan motor and doesn't use electricity for heat or hot water.
And he compares all this high-efficiency goodness to a run-of-the-mill PC with apparently no power saving features and two (count 'em, TWO) 19" CRT monitors.
So, apparently, if you exclude HVAC and hot water, get a new refrigerator, and make heroic efforts to keep down lighting costs, electronics which you make no attempt to optimize for power usage end up being a large part of the total. Surprise, surprise, surprise.
Although I still wonder why they'd even make a plastic "ground" prong. Especially considering that there has been some hype about conducting plastic, eventually someone could legitimately get confused.
"What, grandpa? There used to be a time when everyone just assumed plastic wouldn't conduct?"
As for me, even if I have a metal ground, if it's important to me that a device be grounded, I'll verify that it is grounded first. (Well, at least that the outlet's ground is grounded. In older buildings, this is not always true, even though I believe it is legally required.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
CFLs have been around for several decades. For much of the time they were expensive, and light quality was quite noticeably different -- enough so to be annoying to many people -- than incandescent light. Add a few additional quirks such as size (CFLs tended to be larger than similar incandescent fixtures and wouldn't fit some lamps), and toxins (principally mercury) leading to a disposal problem, and you had some pretty strong disincentives.
What's happened with a few decades is that CFLs are now small, inexpensive, high-quality light (yes, you can still sense a difference, but often only if you look closely). LEDs are just starting to hit mainstream, and while I'm finding that high-output LEDs make great flashlights and bike lights (long life, low draw, reasonably high output), they aren't yet practical for home lighting beyond some accent use. They are tiny and draw minuscule power, so you're likely to see accent/decorator use. But total output, and high-output use remains expensive. Light temperature is also considerably harsher than incandescent or CFL. I'd say mainstream use remains a decade or more off.
If you want to gauge that, keep an eye out for industrial / commercial use. Companies with bottom-line interests, and purchasing agents who don't have to deal with the light quality, are more prone to be early adopters. Similar trend noted in CFLs.
The Pacific Northwest benefits from huge hydro facilities (BPA, the Bonneville Power Administration), and location of some very high-electrical consumption industries, notably aluminum smelting (bauxite is reduced to aluminum oxide which is electrically seperated into aluminum and other byproducts). A naive calculation based on population and energy generation/consumption of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana would grossly overstate household electrical usage.
I cannot believe that no one has designed a remote control code for true POWER ON, POWER OFF signals, rather than a POWER FLIP signal.
Or they could have at least designed damn hifi stuff to power cycle on a short press, but turn ON, if pressed > 1500ms
Simple design, great results. Now dont get me started on the R-Tard designed chinese brand stuff, tiny play buttons, grrrr dont
you guys there know how to design? At least copy Sonys remotes for gods sake. Stop making fricking small play buttons. Oh and
stop calling Screen Ratio Change buttons ARC, when you have room to put text "RATIO" there, as you already have buttons called "SOUND" which
swap between diff modes. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040607.html
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
My CFLs never flicker, they are warm coloured and look like normal lights.
I say screw edison/ge bulbs. Its time they should be put to death.
Next stage is perhaps 6-12 white LEDs, which dont have a good life time as CFL btw, and on a LUX/Watt level are not as good.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Are you using dimmable CF bulbs?
Are you dimming them with a triac-based (chopper) circuit or with a variac (transformer) circuit?
I've read that dimmable CF bulbs do not work with triac-based circuits as found in most X10 home automation hardware.
Guys, we're not wasting ANY energy, at least during the heating season.
Sort of true. If you are heating with electricity then no, that is not waste heat. But, if you are heating with gas then that electric heat costs double or triple what the gas heat it displaced would have cost. You are also using the energy in a very wasteful way, burning coal to make heat to make electricity, delivering the electricity, then turning it right back into heat. You've probably lost half the heat energy of the coal. Electricity for general space heating is wasteful if gas is available. Gas would probably be wastful if district heating from the waste heat of the coal burning power plant was available.
Also, there is a question of where that waste heat goes. My electric dryer heats up the laundry room and the basement (where the exhaust pipe runs). That heat is mostly wasted because it isn't somewhere useful (and unfortunately because of the layout of the place I can't really get it somewhere useful).
No, that computer isn't *remotely* power effecient.
The ridiculously high 130+watt idle numbers are probably due to the S2K Bus Disconnect bug/issue AMD had before the switch to 64bit CPUs. Running a program like VCool or FVcool would likely reduce that number by 20-60 watts.
The trend in CPUs (still the biggest single power drain in modern computers) is for MUCH more power-effecient models (especially when idle). A newer CPU and motherboard would be using significantly less power than that old Athlon, despite vastly outperforming the older chip.
The recomendations are probably due to the ridiculous power consumption of Pentium 4 CPUs (which are thankfully behind us now) and $5 "500w" PSUs, which can't possibly deliver half the power advertised. Stay away from those two issues, and a 300W power supply is more than enough for modern systems.
Additionally, 80% effecient power supplies like Seasonic's units are becomming more common, and more widely available, helping to significantly reduce power consumption as well.
With all of this, many people are putting together new towers that use less power than their notebooks.
That's not a fair comparison. Those 19" CRTs probably have a "viewable" size of 17.9".
Besides that, a jump of approx 50% power savings is still huge, and better than you'd get trading-in your old refridgerator for a new one... And with other improvements on the horizon, I predict computer displays will continue to out-pace refrigerator effeciency gains for many years to come.
I fail to see how a DC motor is inherently more effecient than an AC motor. For one thing, it comes into your house as AC to begin with.
I sincerely doubt most people watch TV with a surround-sound amplifier on, 40 hours a week.
I don't see the majority of TV programming (things like news, game shows, soap operas, etc.) getting any more exciting when played over 6 speakers instead of the two built-in to the TV.
I don't know why anyone would leave their TV on to listen to digital music channels for hours a day, when it has already been established that the person in question is using a seperate amplifier for their TV viewing already...
But that didn't stop him from using this in his calculations, not to mention claiming that he's trying to save the earth...
No, it isn't. As I've repeated on /. many times before:
"An electric heater will be a purely resistive load, giving you a nearly perfect power factor of 1.0, whereas your VCR probably has a cheap power supply with a power factor as low as 0.4. So the VCR is causing a lot more power loss [line losses], even though it's the same 5watts."
No doubt this test was done on the same 32-bit AMD Athlon system (without S2K Bus Disconnect enabled) WHICH DOESN'T IDLE P
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
So speaketh an insulted geek.
.... nope. Can't think of any. Here are some cons:
Well heres some facts for you geek boy:
A landline phone uses less electricity (so costs less to run)
A landline phone has a guaranteed quality of service
A landline phone is very cheap to buy.
A landline phone is very resistant to bad lines (useful if you're well out in the country)
A landline phone can have free calls depending on package
An IP phone has cheap/free calls depending on the package/software.
Ummm , any other pros for IP phones
An IP phone uses more power.
An IP phone can be hacked.
An IP phone relies on a good connection - too many dropped packets and the voice sounds unintelligable.
An IP phone is more complex and hence theres more to go wrong.
An IP phone doesn't have guaranteed QOS nor does it have a guaranteed working emergency number.
So geek boy with your business poser phone , those are my pros and cons , lets hear yours.
If you have any and you're not just blowing smoke out your rear.
On an unrelated note, I've tried using CFLs in my house for about four years. I still can't find a model where the color doesn't make me want to vomit.
The GEs I get from Sam's Club are pretty good. I personally don't see enough of a difference against incandescents to complain about it, and I'm the kind of person that's fussy when a monitor isn't displaying a calibrated 6500K white point.
By installing electric baseboard heater timers (from home depot at $40 a pop). I put them on my three big draw heating zones (kitchen, living room, master bedroom) and turned down all the little guys. Presto: winter power consumption cut in half.
I'm also slowly moving to CFLs - but am not satisfied with the quality of the light in all cases. LED christmas lights were also a big switch this year - highly recommended.
Ummm , any other pros for IP phones
Your cons list is mostly true. However, for many uses, it doesn't matter. At work, they only use VoIP phones internally. Because we lease the network, we can offer guarantees about the packets (at the expense of slowing down lower priority traffic). We use a good provider who converts to circuit based connections at our network edge. We gain by having our network edge in China, Japan, India, Europe, South Africa, and the US already. As a result, 90% of our external calls are local rather than long distance (even if someone in Virginia calls someone in Japan). Further, for calls from one internal user to another, we never touch external networks.
At home, I pay less than $30 per month and get included long distance. Since most of my longer calls are long distance, this works for me. Doesn't work for you? Feel free to stick with POTS then. So geek boy with your business poser phone Way to make friends and influence people, buddy.
Home Depot, amazingly enough, but getting enough meant wiping out 5 local stores of them and none of them have gotten any more. Your best bet is to ask them to check local stores for stock.
All of mine are on two-way X10 dimmer circuits, no problem with any of them.
Of course these are $100 switches, not the cheapo $10 X10 ones, but they work great.
Have not had any luck getting dimmable R30s or R40s there, and I have asked
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Look at the labels on the shelf for them... the dimwits I talked to *never* knew what I was talking about until I dragged them over and pointed at the label. Then they could look it up in the computer.
A landline phone uses less electricity (so costs less to run)
This very much depends on your landline phone. I'd be surprised if there was much difference in power usage between a DECT phone and an 802.11 SIP phone.
A landline phone has a guaranteed quality of service
Dependent on your service provider. If you have the right equipment an IP phone provides similar QoS.
A landline phone is very cheap to buy.
Also dependent on the type of phone you buy - you can get POTS phones from anywhere around £5 up to £250 or more. At the low cost end you're probably right - you can't get an IP phone for much less than £40, but at the top end there's not much difference.
A landline phone can have free calls depending on package
I'm not sure how this is at all different to any other type of phone - be it IP, GSM, ISDN, etc.
An IP phone uses more power.
We already covered this one (above).
An IP phone can be hacked.
Presumably you mean "cracked"? An 802.11 phone with WPA turned on is far less open to cracking than a DECT phone. Also, have you never heard of POTS wire tapping? it's quite easy to do with a pair of wire cutters and an earphone...
An IP phone doesn't have guaranteed QOS nor does it have a guaranteed working emergency number.
Again, we covered this above - if you're using the right equipment and a good service provider then you can guarantee the same level of QoS as any POTS phone.
So geek boy with your business poser phone , those are my pros and cons , lets hear yours.
IP phones are used in many office buildings since they reduce the amount of wiring required (you only require a single cat5e network rather than a separate set of twisted pairs for the phone system).
Also, people who travel a lot quite like IP phones since they can make calls from the hotel network without having to pay the high telephone charges that hotels like to charge.
http://blog.nexusuk.org