Re: Why is the ATX PSU designed to standby current?

From: John Larkin (jjSNIPlarkin_at_highTHISlandPLEASEtechnology.XXX)
Date: 02/10/05 

Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 08:22:18 -0800

On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 09:58:23 -0500, Keith Williams <krw@att.bizzzz>
wrote:

>> How the hell do you run Windoze without a reset switch?? :-)
>
>Laying on the power switch to four seconds will shut down an ATX supply
>(at least that's what the spec says). It's just a slower reset. ;-)
>

Unless Windump has crashed so hard it's taken out the BIOS too. Then
you have to hit reset before the power button will work. If it has a
reset. I just cycle the big rocker on the UPS.

>> I run my PC's on a UPS too, leave them on basically all the time. For the
>> environmentally conscious, I figure that it's better to sue a couple of
>> watts more rather than suffer the wear and tear on components leading to
>> earlier failure and more rubbish. (It's my rationalization, I'll try if I
>> want to....)
>
>Like everything there is a trade-off point. Cycling a PeeCee isn't all
>that hard on it. I generally power them on once a day. Once on they
>stay on. Though the reason I do so is more boot time than
>reliability/cost/power.

Something like 3% of the electricity ganerated in the US goes to power
PCs left on all the time. They're left on mostly because Winmuck takes
so long to boot. They use so much power because it takes a 100-amp
Pentium chip to execute the 80 million lines of code required to print
a 1-page document in less than 10 minutes.

John

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