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

From: Keith Williams (krw_at_att.bizzzz)
Date: 02/10/05 

Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 12:11:15 -0500

In article <3j2n019uq4ar86lsngmcbvkgat1rdm32gn@4ax.com>,
jjSNIPlarkin@highTHISlandPLEASEtechnology.XXX says...
> 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.

It does, but it takes more than 2 seconds (takes perhaps 30 seconds on
this laptop). ...longer to restore. There is more to hibernation than
copying RAM to disk. 

-- 
  Keith

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