I have an older laptop, an acer aspire 3680 that I use. I keep it plugged in at all times (since the battery doesn’t work anymore) but don’t know how much energy I save by putting it into sleep mode. Sleep mode is a hassle because it sometimes takes several minutes to boot up.
According to this the AC adapter on this model is about 65-75 watts. My original charger is broken so I am using an after market one, but it is 65 watts.
So if I do not put it into sleep mode but I have it turn the LCD off, how much energy does it use when it is just sitting there like that (not computing anything with the LCD blackened? 40 watts an hour? Supposedly sleep only takes 1-3 watts an hour, i’m trying to determine the lowest wattage I can get w/o going into sleep mode. I think LCDs generally use 0.2 watts/hour per square inch, with a 14.1" screen I think that is about 100 square inches (give or take) so 20 watts for the screen alone. So if the adapter is 65 watts and the screen is blackened, you’d assume 30-40 watts is a good estimate for what it is using.
I have several CFL bulbs in my apartment, and they are about 10 watts each. so if the laptop is using 40 watts an hour that is like 4 lights turned on all day. But that still only adds up to 1kwh of energy every day or so. So a few bucks a month.
This is why my electric bill was only $16 last month. Because of my neuroticism.
Even an older laptop shouldn’t take “several minutes” to come out of sleep mode. Are you sure it’s only going into sleep mode and not hybernation mode?
Recovery from sleep should only take a few seconds, certainly not several minutes. Are you sure it’s not going into “hibernation”?
If the system is on, it’s likely drawing 20 to 40 watts even without the LCD (like beowulff said, you’ll need a kill-a-watt or similar to know for sure). Sleep will decrease that to less than 3 watts or so.
Yes, even a laptop running full-power 24/7 won’t cost that much. (Even 100 watts for 30 days straight is only about $9 at 12 cents a kWh). But it’s still a waste of energy, so consider looking into the sleep/hibernation difference if you can.
Just FYI, “watt” is already a rate (equivalent to 1 joule per second). A draw of 100 watts over 1 hour is 1 watt-hour. An explanation, if you care.
OK, here are my numbers:
Laptop asleep, battery charged: 1W
Operating, screen on, idle, connected to the Internet via WiFi: 14W
Same as above, screen off: 9W
Just for a point of reference, if your electricity costs 10¢/kWh, the difference between 1W for a year, and 9W for a year is less than $7. So, while I would never advocate wasting money (and I sleep my computers as much as possible), it’s really not much of a difference.
I wasn’t aware that watts per hour was a term to describe changes in the rate of energy. Learn something new all the time.
It asks in the power options ‘when do you want the computer to go to sleep’. So it isn’t going into hibernation mode. It normally comes back on within 20 seconds, but sometimes it takes several minutes.
This is a 5 year old laptop that is on its last legs, there have been times it takes 10+ minutes just to open a browser window.
beowulff - that is pretty interesting. I would’ve expected higher for a newer laptop with a better processor. Do you have a steady state drive or a hard disk?
my laptop battery is 45 watt-hours (it is broken, so it doesn’t matter. Even when it did work I know it didn’t last very long) and the adapter is 65 watts.
I don’t know if mine is anywhere near 10-15 watts. If it were the battery would’ve kept it running for 3 or more hours. From what I remember I was lucky to get one hour. But I’m assuming since it is 65 watts that is where my laptop maxes out.
My laptop is a Core i7 (2 real cores + 2 “virtual” cores). This processor has very good energy management. If I max out all 4 cores, it takes 50W. If I were to run some graphics-intensive program at the same time, it would probably take another 25W.
I do have a hybrid drive (750GB + 4GB SSD), but it still spins all the time…
An energy monitor is a pretty handy thing to have around the house, if you really want to know. I recommend the Belkin version over the kill-a-watt (a lot easier to use).
The usage also depends on what you’re doing. Using the DVD, downloading stuff, taxing the processor, etc. all use more power than staring at a blank screen. Modern processors are pretty good about ramping power draw up and down as necessary, and processors from 5 years ago are still ok at it, but maybe not great.
Computers do not get slower over time. Back up your data files and use your recovery partition to put your computer back to factory settings. Make sure you have the installation cds for any non-windows software. If you are still running with 528mb, then upgrade to 1gb. Defrag your hard drive. Make sure you note all your passwords before you do this.
I found the solution to Firefox bloat is to run Seamonkey. This is another browser from Mozilla that is like a light weight Firefox.
http://www.seamonkey-project.org/
I use it on my nettop box. I use Chrome on my faster computers. If you don’t need Windows software, then Ubuntu is another alternative.
Problem is you can’t compare across years or models easily, processors and displays and everything have become way more efficient over time, modern i3-i7 and even gpu use very little when downclocked in idle modes.
But yes suspend should be single digits.
Hibernation essentially nothing.
screen off saves very little, a laptop uses ~30-50 watts.
No reason it should take minutes to suspend, it shouldnt take that long to hibernate either. All hibernate does is write the ram to the hiberfile, whereas suspend just shuts most of the pc down and keeps ram active.
But theres no point to wasting electricity for no reason, you are just going to have to trouble shoot to see what devices ar ekeeping you from suspending quickly, it should wake and sleep in a snap.
Its a vista laptop, so yes its old. but still, hibernation should read the hiberfile so quick that it loads in 30 seconds flat, if not, your system is cludged up and or the drive is failing. I’ve used hibernation for a long time now, since its as good as being off, without losing what you were working on before. On the other hand many vista pc’s that came out as vista ready back in the day were kind of stretching the definition of “ready”.
I guess the question is how much ram do you have.
Vista with 512mb as some came with back in the day was a cruel joke.