Ask HN: Should I turn off my idle machine over the weekend?

Re:Ask HN: Should I turn off my idle machine over the weekend? by vortico on Friday September 27, 2019 @02:38PM (#21094941)

Your computer probably consumes about 100W when idle. The difference between on and off all year is https://www.google.com/search?q=100%20W%20%2A%201%20year%20%... But the weekends would just be $30. If you have reasons to log into your machine remotely that are worth more than $30/yr, then it's worth it.

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Re:Ask HN: Should I turn off my idle machine over the weekend? by atonse on Friday September 27, 2019 @02:51PM (#21095095)

Wake-On-Lan was good for exactly this kind of use case, but it never quite picked up.

Also newer PCs generally use less than that, probably closer to 50W idle?

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Re:Ask HN: Should I turn off my idle machine over the weekend? by johnsonjo on Friday September 27, 2019 @03:39PM (#21095552)

I use Wake on LAN on my Desktop PC/Plex Server and it works great. I still need to setup shutdown remotely which I could probably just do with ssh or something similar (I don’t think I want to go as far as Remote Desktop mainly for security reasons). Anyways, I’m curious as to why you said it never picked up. Do you say that just because it is not yet popular, not widely supported, or because it is somehow flawed?

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Re:Ask HN: Should I turn off my idle machine over the weekend? by rasz on Friday September 27, 2019 @05:58PM (#21096644)

never quite picked up as in got so standard and ubiquitous you dont even notice it?

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Re:Ask HN: Should I turn off my idle machine over the weekend? by atonse on Sunday September 29, 2019 @08:29AM (#21106640)

Is to built into Remote Desktop clients? Doubt it.

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Re:Ask HN: Should I turn off my idle machine over the weekend? by ac29 on Friday September 27, 2019 @05:43PM (#21096546)

> 100W when idle

That's significantly off - my Skylake desktop PC idles around 15-25W (I just checked with a kill-a-watt).

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Re:Ask HN: Should I turn off my idle machine over the weekend? by vortico on Friday September 27, 2019 @06:11PM (#21096718)

Hmm, I've always used 100W as a reference. Maybe I got that from server estimates?

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Re:Ask HN: Should I turn off my idle machine over the weekend? by Havoc on Saturday September 28, 2019 @12:11PM (#21101149)

It used to be a good estimate not so long ago. Things have improved dramatically recently

You see the same on laptops. Each generation seems to come with a smaller wattage brick

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Re:Ask HN: Should I turn off my idle machine over the weekend? by rambojazz on Saturday September 28, 2019 @12:44AM (#21098510)

That would be more like it. 100W for an idle desktop/laptop PCs sounds pretty high.

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Re:Ask HN: Should I turn off my idle machine over the weekend? by SamReidHughes on Friday September 27, 2019 @09:35PM (#21097793)

My dual socket Xeon desktop half a decade ago idled at 94W.

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Re:Ask HN: Should I turn off my idle machine over the weekend? by jgtrosh on Friday September 27, 2019 @02:48PM (#21095064)

Thanks for reminding me that I exceptionally turned off my office PC today, leaving inaccessible the latest version of a paper I need to submit this weekend Today, it wasn't worth the savings.

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Re:Ask HN: Should I turn off my idle machine over the weekend? by ASalazarMX on Friday September 27, 2019 @05:44PM (#21096549)

If your main use is sharing files, any cloud drive would take care of that. Besides the money, it's wise not to waste resources needlessly.

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Re:Ask HN: Should I turn off my idle machine over the weekend? by jgtrosh on Monday September 30, 2019 @12:34PM (#21117132)

Clearly, there are better ways to share files than scp from work desktop.

I should have said that having forgotten to push changes to a remote repo, turning the desktop off partially caused quite a bit of extra work in an already very busy weekend. I value that wasted time and energy more than the electrity that would have been wasted had I left the desktop on.

Saying that it's wise to turn the PC off has no effect on the large swathes of corporate developers who only see an off PC as potential waste of time.

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