[TriLUG] Home PC power usage

[Igor Partola]

I remember measuring Pentium 4 and Pentium D power usage when idle and I
got about 115 Watts too. Here's the funny thing: the computers were running
Windows; when I clicked on the Start button, the power usage jumped to 140
Watts for about 2-3 seconds, then went back down to 115 Watts. It makes
perfect sense, but I love the idea of measuring the power usage change when
actually doing anything specific with a computer.

This also got me on the idea of trying to figure out what the energy
difference is between printing something out and sending email. My rough
calculation showed that one printed page is equivalent to about 20 emails
(as far as just pure energy consumption goes, not talking about the impact
of growing/chopping trees, etc.)

Back to the topic at hand, I run an old AMD Athlon X2 24/7, but at least in
the winter months it's a nice space heater. Less than ideal in the summer,
but sometimes you just need the extra power that you cannot get with a
small device + USB (this thing is a home server/NAS).

Igor