Air quality worsening in the valleys

[kapetrich]

Originally Posted by Lunar Delta

Makes me wonder what kind of appliances and such you have in your house. I know I could not possibly leave my room closed up or uncooled at any time of the year. The computer can heat the room up to over 90 in under an hour.

The rest of the apartment easily goes over 80, even with everything non-essential shut off.

I have a laptop and I don't run any other appliances during the day because I'm not there. My summer time electric/gas bill combined for a 1,500 sq. ft. home with 2 other roommates is around $40 a month and we cook in A LOT (4-5 times a week).

Do you leave your desktop (I'm guessing you have a desktop since it puts off so much heat) running all day? Do you work from home or are you there all day? If not, why leave it on?

Also, why do you have a desktop in this day in age? Do you game? Do you run servers? Do you work form home? If so, fair play. If not, why not downsize to a machine that uses less energy and omits much less heat?

On the plus side, since we have MANY more cold months than warm, the desktop heat would come in pretty handy as an auxiliary heater......right?

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Edit: We are talking apples and oranges. You live in the valley. I live in 'high desert' of central Oregon. We get temperature fluctuations of 30-50 degrees in the summer from day and night keeping home temperatures easier to regulate in the summer months, I'd imagine. Sorry for hijacking this thread.

[Lunar Delta]

Do you leave your desktop (I'm guessing you have a desktop since it puts off so much heat) running all day? Do you work from home or are you there all day? If not, why leave it on?

The actual act of turning a computer on is extremely shocking to the system. You get better overall life by just leaving it on.

Also, why do you have a desktop in this day in age? Do you game? Do you run servers? Do you work form home? If so, fair play. If not, why not downsize to a machine that uses less energy and omits much less heat?

I am a frequent gamer, I run a Minecraft server, and I do perform most of my audio and video editing work from home, among other things. And even so, I don't particularly like laptops in general. I think of them as toys. And aside from all of that, there is something incredibly satisfying about the process of selecting the right parts and building your own computer by hand.

On the plus side, since we have MANY more cold months than warm, the desktop heat would come in pretty handy as an auxiliary heater......right?

Haha, yeah.

/hijack

[hamellr]

Originally Posted by Lunar Delta

The actual act of turning a computer on is extremely shocking to the system. You get better overall life by just leaving it on.

This hasn't been true for at least fifteen years even with buying the cheapest parts you can. Modern electronics design is such that it's been a moot point for years.

The limiting factor used to be mean time before failure rates on power switches, resistors and capacitors. These days their MTBF is so high that you would have to turn the computer off and on every second for 100 years straight.

The power breaker in your house that controls the circuit your computer is on will be more likely to fail then any components in your computer.

[Lunar Delta]

Good to know. =D

[Larry Caldwell]

I run a high end desktop, and even the video card has its own cooling fan. If I leave it unattended for an hour, it goes to sleep, turns off the monitor, and drops to about a 2 watt power consumption.

It adjusts the computing power to match the task, from about as much processor as the original PC to more computing power than the world's fastest supercomputer in 1990. Normally you can't even hear it running, but when I load a graphics and cpu intensive application, the fans wind up and blow quite a bit of hot air.

Under most conditions, modern energy star desktop computers use very little more power than a laptop with the same capability.