Blank Screensaver vs Monitor Off
Your best power savings is to physically shut the monitor off. Using a blank screen saver only puts black on the monitor. Its high voltage and scans are still working. The reason why it would be black, is because the tube is biased down. The lower beam current difference is very small in comparison to having the rest of the monitor in operation.
The typical computer monitor like the one you have should pull about 0.15 kW-hr.
Going from what we pay for power over here, from this you can calculate how much power it is consuming. If you were paying out $0.08 cents per kW-hr, then the cost would be $0.012 per hour, or $0.29 per 24 hour period. I don't consider this a whole lot of money, in relation to our cost of living.
If you really want to save a lot of cost with a monitor, you should consider a TFT, or LCD screen. These typically will consume about 0.045 kW-hr. The effective power cost for this should be about 1-3 average of that of a CRT monitor.
As for your PC, the power consumption is very high in relation to a descent laptop. A typical desktop PC can easily consume more than 0.25 kW-hr.
If you want to have a computer that will consumer very little power, you should consider a Centrino type laptop computer. This would cost next to nothing to run, and give a very good performance.
The best way to save power with any device is to use the power switch. Remember that turning the power on and off of electronic devices over short periods of time, will reduce their expected life span. Most of the stress on these devices occurs when the power is coming on.
If you are frequently shutting and restarting your electronic devices, you may find that you will have a greater maintenance, and replacement cost, than the electricity to run them.
--
JANA
I have a rather technical question about using the blank screensaver (fyi: that's the ss which does no graphics) vs. turning the monitor off. Which combination (ON-OFF) of these two saves more electricity? (I am trying to keep my electric bill to a minimum without shutting down my pc.) My monitor is a ViewSonic Pro Series P95f+.
This is a common practice with most all the manufactures today. If you very carefully read their warranty policy, they...
The following are my guesses for how much energy is used in each of the four possible combinations.
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Monitor ON Screensaver ON = middle energy usage Monitor ON Screensaver OFF = maximum energy usage Monitor OFF Screensaver ON = minimum energy usage Monitor OFF Screensaver OFF = middle energy usage
Sorry if this question has already been asked here many times previously, but I'm quite frustrated and...
Is the combination, OFF-ON, the minimum?
PS: flamers need not reply.
tia, -- joe
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