On Mar 1, 2010, at 2:39 PM, Clark Martin wrote:

> On 2/28/10 8:16 PM, Austin Leeds wrote:
>>   Some people say it's wasteful—leaving a computer on at night sucks
>> up electricity. Personally, I find that my Pismo uses only about 1% of
>> its battery life per night (with two somewhat used 6.6 Ah batteries
>> topping off at a total of 10.7 Ah). Doesn't seem like much to me, and
>> I'm pretty sure having our iMac G4 sleeping through the night doesn't
>> make more than a nano-nick on our electrical bill. I notice more usage
>> than that starting the Pismo up on batteries, usually around 2-3%.
>> Guess that kills that argument.
>>   Anyway, the longest uptimes I've seen around here are the one-week
>> sessions we have with our iMac G4, before it is booted into Mac OS 9
>> or accidentally turned off or something. My Pismo has gone roughly as
>> long… However, the longest uptimes I've seen reported for Mac
>> computers (not counting the several hundreds of days servers can run)
>> are between 36 and 45 days for some PPC Power Macs.
>>   I'm going to try leaving my Pismo on (asleep at night) for as long
>> as I possibly can, just out of curiosity. I'll post in five day
>> intervals initially. Anybody else have some unbelievable uptime
>> stories?
>> 
> 
> My MacBook Pro is usually running (including periods of sleep) for months at 
> a time.  The usual reason for it to be restarted is a software update.
> 
> 
> You are right, laptops when sleeping draw a tiny amount of power.  I'd have 
> to do the math to be accurate but I'd suspect you would have to leave a 
> laptop asleep for somewhere between a week and a month to use as much energy 
> as you would starting the computer up.
> 
> Desktops are a different matter.  I've measured power on various Macs. As an 
> example an iMac G3 draws 93 watts running and 37 watts on standby.  That 
> seems typical for PPC models.  Yes, they do save power on sleep but not THAT 
> much.  An Intel iMac on the other hand only draws about 1 watt when sleeping 
> (I don't have the running power).  Note that the same machine draws the same 
> amount of power when off, so in that case it truly saves power to let it 
> sleep, no wasted time booting up.


Interesting discussion, guys. Now I feel better about letting by MacBook Pro 
sleep all night every night!


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