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 08:26:42 -0800

On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 03:48:42 -0700, "Fritz Schlunder" <me@privacy.net>
wrote:

>
>"Alan Liefting" <ALiefting@ihug.co.nz> wrote in message
>news:420ABCDC.4070309@ihug.co.nz...
>> I am mystified as to why the ATX PSU was designed so that it draws
>> standby current even while the PC is off. I am a bit of an
>> environmentalist and I find it rather lax of govt agencies to allow this
>> blatent waste of what collectively is a whole stack of CO2 emssions.
>>
>> The only advantage of the current (!!) ATX power supply design is the
>> wake on LAN feature.
>
>
>I would care to differ with the idea that wake on LAN is the only benefit
>the ATX power supply offers. Learn how to configure your computer to use
>suspend-to-ram, and try it out for awhile. Once you've gotten a taste for
>it you will never want to go back.
>
>Unfortunately not all cheap motherboards and other hardware is fully
>compatible yet with suspend to ram, but hopefully your system is.

Unfortunately, not all OSs handle this properly. Windows, for example.

  When you
>suspend to ram all of the contents of your memory remain intact, but all of
>the power hungry equipment of your system turn off (monitor, drives, fans,
>processor, etc.). Power consumption drops dramatically, but your
>motherboard continuously refreshes the ram contents so they aren't lost.

Why doesn't Windows suspend to disk? Just copy all of ram to disk and
*fully* shut down, zero power. Restart would take about 2 seconds;
spin up the disk, restore RAM, run.

John

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