John Brooks

London

Heating engineer / IT comms

Oh dear - it's the old 'TVs and Hi-Fis left in standby waste all the output of a whole power station' argument applied to PCs...
Wrong! Virtually all the power consumed by a PC left on is converted to HEAT - which heats the building. Same applies to TVs in standby - the heat might be 'useful' and might reduce the use of other heat sources in winter.
But in reality it's probably much WORSE waste than the report suggests: not only are the PCs pushing out (unnecessary?) heat; chances are the building is also being cooled by an AC system, which uses a LOT more energy than all the PCs!!!
Anyway, virtually ALL PCs have power management, which quiesces the processor and shuts down the hard disks. Why are these features not being used?