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Turn Off the *&#%ing Computer!!

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Written by Peter Carmel
Sunday, 21 May 2006
Sometimes I notice that computers are left on continuously and I wonder why people don’t simply shut them down ever. At least when they go to sleep or leave the office for the day. There are a lot of people who just simply keep their computer running constantly, day and night. These are the people who will be wondering why the computer needs service so fast. Or why their electricity bill is so high. To be more specific you might ask: When does it become more cost effective to turn the computer and/or monitor off instead of leaving it running until I return? As a general rule, I advise my friends and customers to leave the computer running if they are planning on coming back within 60 minutes. Some people take part of this advice and turn their monitor off when they go to lunch, while the computer itself runs all day long. This only takes into account the economics of the situation, however. I guess you also need to factor in the convenience, and time savings of having the computer ready to go when you return. At this point, it’s a quality of life, reliability, as well as economic issue. It used to be the case that powering up and shutting down the computer posed a significant wear-and-tear issue for computers. While there is still some truth to the fact that computers and monitors are stressed harder when cycling like that, current components are built to withstand this stress better than say 10 years ago. To better decide the economics of this issue, I will compare the cost of replacing the component with the cost of using the electricity while leaving it running. Since it is impossible to say exactly how much a components wears down when cycling it, we can ballpark this by assuming that cycling a computer wears it down the same as running it for one hour. A simple calculation can be made that shows that running your computer with the monitor off uses about $.02 per hour. If left on indefinably, assuming your computer actually consumes 100 watts on the average, in one year, your computer will use about $175 in electricity. Adding in the monitor, you can expect this amount to double! It’s true! Your computer uses over $10 per month to run! Beyond the cost of electricity, the increased cost of maintenance can be significant. While the computer is running, the hard disk drive and internal cooling fans are continuing to run as well. These components are essential to the computer and any failures will cause the computer to fail. It is true that while these tiny fans are critical to the operation of the computer, they are one of the first things to fail. If the air is really dirty, at some point, the dust may clog the fans and air passages causing the component to overheat to the point of failure. The fans themselves all eventually fail simply because all mechanical spinning devices wear down. At this point, the computer may unexpectedly seem flaky, or may suddenly fail, causing either repairs or replacement, or even worse loss of data. It is difficult to estimate the cost of failure and maintenance. Your mileage may vary! Of course, everyone has different lifestyle and circumstances. For instance, these rules would not apply to a webserver that needs to stay running continuously.
Last Updated ( Wednesday, 04 July 2007 )