What's best, energy wise, to leave the PC on all day, or keep logging it on and off ?

[sameagain]

I need to check my emails periodically during the day, but don't really need to use the PC in between times (except for mumsnet obviously)

Am I better off to leave the PC on all the time or to log it on every hour or so?

if you are logging off but leaving the machine on then I don't think there's much difference

If I'm working I put it to 'sleep' and this makes it all go quiet but it wakes up with the shake of a mouse. Easier than starting up every hour and prob uses less energy too. Obv I shut it down fully when I go out or finish work.

I replaced my desktop with a laptop earlier this year and the electricity consumption is markedly lower. I make an effort to put it in hibernate mode when I'm not using it too. Definitely switch off your monitor at the very least.

we turn off the monitor and log out of windows when we leave the pc but leave it on and our elec bill last month (since we brought the pc downstairs) was markedly lower than it used to be.

I have got one of those electricity monitor thingies and the consumption is almost as high when in hibernate mode as when fully switched on. So now I try and switch off completely if I know I'm going to be offline for an hour or more.

That's really interesting Sophy.

I think we ahould get one of those devices.

My eldest (4) turns people's TVs off standby when she visits theie houses !

apparently, the average consumption of a computer left on stand by at home each year costs an extra £30 according to energy watch so aboput 9p per day. what they don't say is how long this hypothetical computer is left on standby for???

they also don't say how much the average computer costs when running each year is.

if you turn the screen off and the speakers then I suppose it will cost less on standby, but according to energy watch, if I did everything they say to reduce energy consumption, the cost savings would mean that the elctricity and gas company need to send me a cheque

Definitely turn the computer off when not in use. If it's a PC then the tower will probably use around 60W whether on or logged off, reducing to about 50W when in hibernate or sleep or whatever. Standby will be about 5W. Off = 0W! Old school screens will use a lot more than flat screens and laptops use less than PCs generally. You can work out the cost of the energy use by multiplying the instantaneous energy use by the time it's using that energy for by how much you electricity costs e.g. 60W x 1 hour = 0.06 kWh 1 kWh = about 12p nowadays = 0.72p Not a lot, until you consider that if all standby energy was cut, we could close down one power station and if all wasted energy was stopped we could close down all our nuclear power stations.