Myths About PC Power Saving Debunked

As you can probably tell by many posts I make, I am very interested in cutting down on the power my computer uses. The problem when trying to ‘spread the word’ is you always have to overcome things which may have been true 10 years ago, but are basically myths now. While this is not true in every case, it is true a lot of the time.

A good article I came across titled “Five PC power myths debunked” does a good job at dispelling some of these myths. Those covered:

The power used turning my PC on negates any benefits of turning it off.
My screen saver is saving me energy.
Turning my PC on and off will reduce its performance and useful life.
I can’t run updates and patches for PCs in lower-power states.
My PC users will not tolerate any downtime for power management.

While you may not take advantage of everything here, just changing a couple things can really make a difference. Usually all you have to do is make a few mouse clicks and you probably won’t know the difference.

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‘ol geek
‘been running/repairing and designing those things for 35 years. I agree with the thought that all of the listed ideas are false except to note that, almost just like light bulbs, turning off and on a computer can reduce its usefull life of(performance is NOT effected). I’d posit that heat is the greatest degrader of computers followed by mechinical wear. Comments?
http://howto-ubuntu.com eli
Nice article. We have a director here who seems to subscribe to the “I can’t run updates and patches for PCs in lower-power states.” idea. We are a public library, and our machines stay on 24/7 365, unless there’s a big electrical storm in the area (NW FL). How much are we wasting??? Shameful really.
Martyn
At the school i work at. All the networked pcs are set so if they stay at the ‘ctrl alt delte to logon’ phase for more than 10mins they turn themselves off. Good idea if you think of the amount of machines in schools that sit turned on with no-one logged in to them.