Re: The good, the bad, the insane

[Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam whitemice org>]

On Thu, 2011-05-26 at 21:17 +0100, Martin Häsler wrote:
> On 05/26/2011 08:40 PM, Adam Williamson wrote:
> > On Thu, 2011-05-26 at 20:24 +0100, Martin Häsler wrote:
> >> 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? :)
> Apologies for mistaking you for an American, although I never said 
> anything about evil.

I am an evil American.  *Everyone* I know suspends.  Powering off and on
just wastes time.  If we aren't talking about suspend/resume we end up
talking about how to improve boot times because of what a pain it is to
boot-up [you may have noticed a lot of traffic about that recently on
various lists].

Personally, I hibernate rather than suspend.  But for no real reason.

> At least my "generalizations" are based on observations of family, 
> friends and workplace and the

See my generalizations as above.  When I advise people to power-off
rather than suspend [there are some cases where that is appropriate]
they look at me like I'm stoned.

> fact that energy saving power extensions sell very well in Germany.
> You, on the other hand, deduced from your lazy behaviour of never 
> turning your desktop
> off, that that is the norm.

Off course if you power *off* at a power-strip, etc... then not even
Wake-On-LAN can get the machine to start-up for updates, maintainance,
scheduled jobs, etc...  I insist that my 200+ users never power-off
their workstations - and will continue to do so.

> Please read this link: 
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/ethicallivingblog/2007/nov/02/pulltheplugonstandby
> before you think we are talking about peanuts here.

Yes, I'm aware of all that.  But in the end it is just bogus.  Power
plants operate to match base-load requirements;  unplugging your 1W
whatever doesn't reduce CO2 emissions or fuel consumption AT ALL, NONE,
ZILCH.  The real-world doesn't work that way; the system is too layered
with too many structural [possibly unavoidable] inefficiencies.

> Also note, people don't power off their phones because you won't receive 
> any calls when a phone
> is powered off. I don't see how this is comparable to the computer 
> world. My MP3 Player only
> does power off, on the other hand (iaudio).

A workstation / desktop can too quite a bit while I'm away.