Leaving PCs on costing UK business millions
Turn 'em off
Posted in Management, 25th March 2009 09:17 GMT
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A third of business computers in the UK are left switched on overnight, costing British businesses more than £300m a year in extra electricity bills.
In the US the situation is even worse - half of corporate computers are left on overnight. This is costing US firms some $2.8bn a year.
Leaving machines on overnight and at weekends costs British businesses £17 a year for every PC. But the real figure could be even higher reckons Sumir Karayi, chief exec of power management firm 1E, who funded the research.
Karayi said: "A computer uses energy even when it appears to be idle. Shutting down PCs when not in use will help businesses to significantly reduce costs while preventing tons of CO2 from being emitted into our atmosphere."
Gartner estimates the IT and telecom industry generates 2 per cent of world carbon emissions and PCs and monitors account for 39 per cent of that total.
It is standard policy in many large corporates that machines are left on so that software patches and virus updates can be remotely installed while the machines are not in use.
The situation has actually improved somewhat - Harris Interactive, which polled 2,000 UK people, carried out similar research two years ago which found that half of British computers were left on overnight.
Press release here. ®
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COMMENTS
BIOS wakeup
The problem with the BIOS wakeup is that it has no concept of weekends. I wrote a Windows program for our company that automatically shutsdown or switches on your computer once or twice a day and the user can set different times for each setting (i.e. 14 on/off settings, 2 on/off for each day of the week). You can also set it to switch on on a certain date for when you are away on holiday and want it on when you come in.
This lets the computer add updates etc. before you come in but remain off at weekends.
I'm not doing my part.
I must not be leaving enough PCs running to do my part to increase global warming. It's the end of March, the average temperature this time of year is 60 degrees F, and we are under a blizzard warning.
Quick! To the stripminingmobile!
Surely the time for a re-appraisal of Thin Client has come !
So here I am sitting in front of my PC which, I am reliably informed is sucking 300watts out of the wall socket. Am I using it all the time -no ! Is it switched all the time - yes ! And my cute little meter on the desktop says I am at 10% utilisation on average. This has to be madness. Do I really need the latest, greatest 3Ghz processor for a bit of email, a bit of word processing, a few spreadsheets and some browsing ? I don't think so . Perhaps it's a size thing, you know, mine's bigger / faster / fatter than yours. Come on someone, tell us about thin clients. I read one review that suggested 4watts max from one particular unit. That's a bit more like it. And cos my data is now back safe in the data centre those IT guys in the Data Centre have control of my data backup; and so much the better, cos they know how to do it, well a lot more than I do ! And don't start me on viruses..............................................
Leaving files where you found them? @various
Hmm, that seems to be a MS-Windoze problem.
My trusty OS/2 Workplace Shell Desktop does an automatic restart of all files/folders left open at last shutdown.
this is why i like the reg
it's the readers who comment !
my computers die more during power changes [off and on]
it generates heat [where i am and need it [true for me 8 of 12 months] the other 4 i us a dif computer
remote data access [hard to do if it is off ]
remote updates and timed updates in off hours
of course , if our comps last longer , no hardware is bought and software is not needed to be up graded due to new OS on new hardware. We are to blame for the dying economy , we did not buy buy buy .
well la te da and bye buy for now .....
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