Re: The good, the bad, the insane

[Adam Williamson <awilliam redhat com>]

On Thu, 2011-05-26 at 20:24 +0100, Martin Häsler wrote:

> > So for me, your math is wrong. Why? Because before I could actually
> > suspend my desktop and had a convenient interface for doing it, I didn't
> > power it off: I just left it running, so when I stumbled to my desk in
> > the morning it'd be up and running and in the state I left it
> > immediately.Now, I can suspend it at night and resume it in the morning
> > and achieve the same result. For me, working and conveniently-accessed
> > suspend mode results in me saving power, not using more.

> I guess energy prices in the US are still way too low, 

I'm not in the US.

> but leaving aside 
> your
> energy wasting habits, I never argued against a suspend option.
> I just don't want it to be the only option in the user menu.
> Also you act like you couldn't suspend under the old design, which is of 
> course not true.

Well, step back and look at the bigger picture. Why does Shell have a
Suspend option and no Power Off option by default (and originally,
before the Alt hack, had no Power Off option *at all*)? The idea was to
influence people in the direction of seeing suspend/resume as the normal
"I'm done for now / Now I'm starting working again" mechanism, much as
it is on phones, which most people rarely turn off. If you expose a
Power Off option with equal weight to the Suspend option, this influence
is lost, and the inertia of current habits will mean people continue to
see Power Off as the 'normal' way to stop using the system, particularly
on desktops...which may mean they don't do it at all, and don't think to
suspend instead. Providing only a Suspend option adjusts the balance of
the decision. I'm 'educated' enough to understand what all the options
are and the implications of each and make a decision - in practice, the
trigger for me switching from 'leave it on' to 'suspend' was a fix for a
bug which made suspending impractical, not the GNOME 3 re-design - but
that's not true of many users.

> Here in Germany people power off their desktops and then switch off the 
> power extension,
> because electricity is not cheap and we value our environment.  (That 
> used to be mandatory
> at my old job)

Generalizations don't really help anything. You're sure you speak for
all Germans? And I represent all evil Americans, even though I'm not
one? :)
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net