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196 Comments
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -3/+122but if i turn the computer off my music, movie, and software torrents will never finish.... :(
- faithhealer, on 10/11/2007, -4/+114"...some employees assume—usually erroneously—that their PCs need to be left on overnight so that their IT departments can deploy security patches and software updates."
Backups, updates, and virus scans all happen at night at my company. I've never seen a good way of making those things happen during work hours without an adverse effect on productivity. - TheFlamingoKing, on 10/11/2007, -12/+82Obviously, submitter has not had to VPN into work to fix a critical error with the transactional database at 2:45am.
- brandonr, on 10/11/2007, -1/+47Use folding@home when you leave your computer on all the time. It takes away some of the guilt.
- Tyrsson, on 10/11/2007, -6/+46It sounds nice on paper, but when exactly do they propose automatic updates, security patches, backups, etc. to be done?
- lieutenantmudd, on 10/11/2007, -3/+36$1.7 billion doesn't sound like that much to me. Even ignoring the IT requirements put forth above, there is a productivity loss waiting for your computer to boot every morning. Sure, it may be small, but four minutes every day for every worker adds up.
"A midsize company with around 10,000 PCs wastes more than $165,000 per year in electricity costs for computers left on overnight"
So let's pretend there are 10,000 workers making $25/hour,
$165,000 / 250 work days = $660 in daily loss from electricity
10,000 workers x $25/hour x (4 minute/ 60 minutes) = $16,666
So $16,666 in daily loss of productivity if all your workers spend four minutes booting their computer every morning - DeskFlyer, on 10/11/2007, -4/+36From the EAC website: "Out of 104 million office PCs in the US, at least 31.2 million are left on all night."
You mean NONE of those are EVER used by third shifters at work right now like ME?? AMAZING... - shifty2, on 10/11/2007, -0/+18I finally got all my 100+ offices PC's to go into hibernate mode after a certain hour. my 2k3 servers dish out all the updates from MS at 7PM, then all the PC's reboot, do a disk cleanup, defrag, and then goes into hibernate. during the night, all the servers have virus scans done, disk clean ups, and then they get backed up on to 400GB tapes.
the other thing to do is also have more watt efficient machines. All the office PC's i work with are now Core2's which are MUCH better that those stupid P4's running @ 100+ watts IDLE!! Most of the machines are for the accounting and administrative departments, so having integrated video cards help. cant say much for the 40+ CAD workstations running 200+ watt Quadro cards!! - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -1/+18"So $16,666 in daily loss of productivity if all your workers spend four minutes booting their computer every morning"
This assumes that they would use those 4 minutes productively instead of reading and sharing stupid emails, checking how their team did the night before and reading Digg.
4 minutes is beyond negligible, even every day and on a large scale. - digitalrainman, on 10/11/2007, -2/+19If you had a brain you would realize its mainly employee machines that are the issue, not servers.
- digitalrainman, on 10/11/2007, -0/+15The solution that will make everyone happy is called S3 standby. Its a mode of standby for a computer that just keeps the ram running only, absolutely nothing else. That comes out to about 1.8v instead of the about 350-1k that a current computer ranges in. What do you do about updates and virus updates you say? Its called wake on lan. With it enabled your computer will turn on if it gets a network request. You can even use windows scheduler to wake it up when it will need to update or run a scan etc. And then with advanced power settings have it set to put the computer back in standby after a certain time and you dont have to worry about people forgetting to turn it off.
- digitalarcanum, on 10/11/2007, -1/+16yeah you can also set it to upload a certain amount of data before you shut it down too, assclown.
- JamesWilson, on 10/11/2007, -5/+19*Hugs computer tightly*
I treat my boxes like appliances. My fridge is on constantly, so are my computers. Always available. Always. - Urusai, on 10/11/2007, -1/+14Wake-On-Lan for those who don't know. If your setup is so unsophisticated that it doesn't have WOL configured, then you can just as well have the tech manually do everything and stop pretending your "e-enterprise" is boldly forging a new digital future. Another three letters: PXE. Don't try this on your daddy's Dell.
- MadEnvoy, on 10/11/2007, -0/+11I use a script to set the Windows scheduler for an auto-shutdown after the patches/virus scans/spyware scans are complete. Saves the company about 7 hours of electricity each evening. Even after the results were shown on their electric bill, I haven't been thanked.
- funkyjunk3, on 10/11/2007, -1/+12Why not just do the updates after closing time, and then send a remote shutdown command? Shutting down computers remotely doesn't require much, and it would save a hell of a lot of wasted electricity.
- ametory, on 10/11/2007, -3/+14Obviously, Margaret the dumb dumb from HR don't have to leave her computer on all night. The IT department guys are still in the minority in any company.
- pronouncable, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9The computers want us off guard?
I don't THINK so. - gothsquirrel, on 10/11/2007, -4/+13My pc at work is required by management to be left on all the time in case of updates to the software. I think it's bull ***** because they say it cuts into out productivity to have to boot up and reboot in the morning.
- Dochtuir, on 10/11/2007, -5/+14Three Letters : WOL
- griz, on 10/11/2007, -0/+8Have IT set virus scans and updates to happen at 7PM and system shutdown to happen at 8PM. Then have the system autoboot in the morning 5 minutes before you arrive. It can be done with a little forethought. The problem is, it is just easier to ignore the problem.
- ho0ber, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8Magic Packet for the win!
- griz, on 10/11/2007, -2/+8Have the systems autoshutdown after updates happen at a regularly scheduled time. Then have them autostart in the morning. Use a little thought.
- digitalarcanum, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7you don't even need that much, just have the machines do their thing, auto updates, backups etc then just shut the machines down when it's done. Don't even need anything fancy like auto booting at a specified time or WOL. If the user is too stupid to hit a power button on their machine, then it's their problem.
- anarchytv, on 10/11/2007, -5/+11I dumped every other OS for Vista 64, just for S3 standby 'sleep mode'. I can't stand the noise PCs use or the cost of keeping them running. No way in hell I would leave a computer on all night, or all the time, unless its an internet connected server.
Everything goes to sleep but ram refresh; you hit a key and in seconds the system is back awake. No boot. No wait. Unless you want a login screen, then the only delay is how fast you can type a password. All the 'wait time' is put on the back end, which is copying an image of the ram to harddrive when you hit the sleep button, just in case the power should go out and you have to reboot from scratch... in which case the image is loaded and you are right back where you left off. You can hit the sleep button and walk away. Further, your powerbutton on your comptuer or laptoop lid sensor switch should be configured to do a 'sleep' instead of power off.
I love/hate linux, but Standby mode, and how important it is is what the Linux community just DOESN'T get. Its the killer feature that's going to relegate linux back to the server room, unless someone starts understand these aren't the good old days anymore where you put up with 10 minutes worth of waiting through a linux boot and or shutdown. Theres a lot of EVIL INSIDE (tm) in Vista, but on the other hand, it does a hell of a lot of things right as well. As simple as Aero is, its a lot more plesant to work in than KDE, GNOME, Enlgihtment, or the tiny WMs. Linux developers need to ask themselves 'why'? Responsiveness. Simplicity. Speed. Ease of installing / removing applications. Desktop is actually useful to arrange and organize icons on. No big honking taskbar the size of an icon. No stupid bouncing cursors or jello windows. - MadScientist420, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7To say you have to leave computers on 24 a day to backup, update, etc, is just ridiculous. 99% of computers can be backed up and updated in 30min or less. Why should we leave on the computer for the next 15hrs until the worker gets there? Furthermore, would it really be that hard to build in a automatic "computer waker" so the employee doesn't lose those precious 4minutes of productivity when in reality the employee spends that time drinking coffee and ***** next to the water cooler.
We have to start thinking out of the box if we want to reduce our consumption of energy. - db113456, on 10/11/2007, -1/+6Yep, just be vary careful not to mention that these programs actually do something useful while pegging your CPU.
- sabach, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5It used to be true due to the repeated heating/cooling eventually degrading the traces on circuit boards. The better materials being used today have eliminated any problem of that sort. However, digitalrainman, where did you get that statistic?
- Firehed, on 10/11/2007, -1/+6Your IT department is out of touch with the real world if they think that any productivity is going to be floating around during the time when all the PCs would be booting. Everyone where I work is still asleep at 8am. Although come to think of it, there isn't much more productivity at any other time of day either.
- digitalrainman, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5The answer to that is called S3 standby mode with wake on lan enabled. S3 standby uses approximately 1.8v keeping on only your ram. Wake on lan will wake when it needs updates, etc.
- msgyrd, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5They would do that anyways, further compounding the loss.
- LilRabbitFooFoo, on 08/11/2008, -1/+6It's more important to have any and all monitors turn themselves off than the PC.
- fedak, on 10/11/2007, -2/+7Using folding@home (or any of the grid compuiting products) is pretty much the worst thing you can do if you are concerned with the energy usage of your pc.
Most modern PCs (and processors) will shift into a lower power consumption mode when not being taxed. These grid computing programs peg the processor and thus keep the PC and processor at max power consumption when it would otherwise be idle. - Firehed, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5Yeah, having the processor pegged at full usage all night is really going to help things out. In other news, widespread deployment of folding@workplace costs US businesses an additional $2 Billion.
- wilf_brim, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4I used to turn off my work PC until the policy (formal) in the enterprise required the PC to be on to updates. Maybe they are wrong to do this, but I don't have any choice in the matter.
- digitalarcanum, on 10/11/2007, -4/+8utorrent has an option to run a script when a torrent is complete. You can create a batch script that automatically shuts the system down when your 4GB torrent that took all night is done and still know that you're running an efficient ship.
- Firehed, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5And if you have people using them at night, then you have a valid reason to leave them on. That's probably going to be well under 5% of the machines that have a reason to be left on.
- bIuebonics, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4if you have a botnet running on your company network, you have more things to worry about than wasted electricity.
- minchua, on 10/11/2007, -4/+8That's actually an urban legend that isn't true.
- funkyjunk3, on 10/11/2007, -3/+7With windows NT I could believe that, but XP they have no excuse. Push the button, go get some coffee/tea and come back, and voila. Unless of course there is billions of little background crap programs that take 3 minutes to load, most of which probably aren't needed.
- KaptainKandy, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4I love how you blame the OS. When booting up your computer isn't just throwing up a loading screen to piss you off, it is checking to make sure all your hardware is running. Boot in seconds....because OS X and any Linux distro can pull that off?
- rajulkabir, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Yes, no matter how much people may debate about leaving their PCs on, leaving those big CRTs on all night is just pointlessly destructive and completely indefensible. So often I walk by a bank or other company office at night and see the Windows logo bouncing around the screens of all those lazy ***** who couldn't be bothered to push one tiny little button before going home.
- wphj, on 10/11/2007, -5/+9Don't PC's have a hibernate or sleep function? My MacBook goes to sleep and takes up virtualy no power at all once it's charged. Why don't the computers do that?
- funkyjunk3, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4However, your are the exception to the rule. I can bet that MOST of the American workforce doesn't even think about their computer once they leave the office, let alone remote into it.
If it was company wide policy that those employees who remote into their machines could still leave their computers while shutting down the rest, there would still be a huge savings. - rickpdx, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4My company requires everyone to save all their work stuff on servers, which are backed up every night. Personal stuff can go on your own hard drive but all work stuff must be on servers, so no problem with shutting the workstations down. Thus, we are required to turn off all workstations when we leave for the day.
- Ngai, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3we have your IP....
- sagemane, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3In our environment we already have to schedule virus scans during business hours anyway because almost 40% of the workstations we support are laptops that people take home with them every night (the compromise is to schedule them at 12:15p.m. so that most people are on lunch break). Unless your environment is all desktops, your IT department must already have a strategy to deal with patching, scanning and backing up that doesn't require machines to be available after hours.
- Firehed, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Hey, those hot pockets don't cook themselves.
- mastercheif, on 10/11/2007, -10/+13Way to leach *****.
- thcobbs, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3I did some quick math at my company (~125 employees... assuming .75 computers per employee -- we do SBC design/manufacture). We'd save approx $20,000-50,000 per year by turning off computers after we leave.
I even go the president of the company to say it was a good idea.... but then nothing ever happened...
C'est La Vie -
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