Veronica Portas

CS 312

Prof Wolf

Computers, electricity and you

This article was taken from hardwareinreview.com, it relates to The Computer and The Dynamo by Brian Hayes in that it explains solutions to saving money on your electrical bill by modifying some parts of our computer. Nowadays there is a constant debate on how much power is being used on our computers. Even though measures are being taken both at home and at work to save electricity, the USA is hooked on power and there is no way to just live without it anymore.

In Computers, electricity and you, the author test different kinds of computer parts to determine which kinds save you money on your electrical bill. Some of the test included trying different processors, monitors and operating systems. The monitors was one of the more shocking of these categories in my opinion because an Apple 17” LCD used 25.5 KWh monthly costing an average of $1.87, while an Samsung 19” CRT used 53 KWh monthly, costing an average of $3.87. That’s twice as much to use the CRT monitor.

Apple PowerMac and Sun Java Workstation were compared to see which one lost less on average monthly. Even though some people refuse to compare an Apple with any other computer, the Apple cost about $2.00 more to run monthly compared to the Sun Java Workstation. Apple PowerMac G5 uses 198 KWh monthly while the Sun Java Workstation uses 175KWh. Also the author tested Intel Pentium D 820 and an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+, the conclusions were that Intel cost about $2.00 more monthly. Testing operating systems really didn’t show a great significant difference; the difference between Windows and Linux was less then $1.00. If we are talking about a school or business where there are 30 or more computers the yearly cost to power these will be very high.

Even though there have been debates about how much electricity the US really uses to power computers, things will probably not change for awhile. I think a good solution is different power sources, like solar power. Technology makes advances constantly; I think that this issue will not really be something to worry about in the future. But if you do want to save some money on your bill the author did a good job on explaining different things that would save you about $5.00 on your bill.

Source:

Matzan, Jem Computers, electricity and you