Laptop vs Desktop

gino_76ph

Hi there!

I recently bought an HP DV7 with Windows 7 Professional and have previously had a desktop PC.

the reason why i bought a laptop is because of its portability, sleekness, price and of course the one who made it. (and the price:-)


but recently i have been entertaining the idea what if i can save on my electricity bill with a desktop PC as well? i'm talking about those small cube-like CPU's that are available on the market.

are they any good? do they save more electricity? (the most i use my laptop is 2-4 hours max. per day and so is my wife.)

so, what is your advice please?


Thanks.

dj_flame

Hi

I think your talking about Atom computers.
They are really space savers, and to be honest with your computer usage I can't really see you making significant savings on your electricity.

Either bin the desktop, and share the laptop, Or keep both.

Desktops may not provide you with portability, However, remember that should something go wrong inside, Generally, Desktops are easier to replace parts in than laptops.

Also those parts are normally easier to source.

Good Luck

DJ Flame

InsideInsurance

Laptops make use of low power components for both the advantages they bring on battery life and the main issue for laptops, their low heat output.

Not sure which "cubes" you are talking about but many of the ultra small computers have the same heat issues and therefore also use laptop components.

The only way you are going to make a material change in the power consumption is if you dont need any form of screen, obviously only really talking a practicality for server type duties rather than web browsing etc.

NeverAgain_2

I spilled a teaspoonful of Coke on the keyboard of my laptop, which wrote-off the whole machine.

The same accident with a desktop would have cost me at most £10 for a new keyboard.

More likely nothing, because the damage was to the laptop's internals underneath the keyboard, not the keyboard itself.

Norman_Castle

My 10 year old desktop pc with a 15" TFT monitor uses around 70 watts. Not sure how this compares to "cube" type desktops or laptops.

John_Gray

Buy one of those 13A socket energy monitors to measure the wattage actually used by your PC+monitor, and laptop.

As said above, they don't use that much electricity, and in the winter their heat output will save you tiny amounts on your central heating bill!

gino_76ph

i don't have central heating. i use those stock wall electricity heaters during winter but if i can get away with saving and squeezing in more of my bills then why not isn't it.

will turning off the screen or putting my laptop on sleep mode save me on electricity? or changing my extension cords to something more eco-friendly do anything?

if i use my laptop for say 8-10 hours a day with 4 hours sometimes on non-stop would that have an impact on my bills?

esuhl

gino_76ph wrote: »

...recently i have been entertaining the idea what if i can save on my electricity bill with a desktop PC as well? i'm talking about those small cube-like CPU's that are available on the market.

are they any good? do they save more electricity? (the most i use my laptop is 2-4 hours max. per day and so is my wife.)

I'm not overly familiar with cube PCs, but I understand that they generally consume a similar amount of power as a laptop. There are some exceptions like the 5W Space Cube that NASA will be using.

The Wikipedia entry on laptops suggests that a laptop uses 20-90W of power, whilst desktops use 100-800W. In practice, it's rare to have a PSU rated as high as 800W (unless you have a top-end gaming PC or built it yourself), and even if it does, the PC will only use "up to" 800W at its peak usage - in practice it probably averages about 200W at most (at a guess!). This page suggests that a 1.7GHz P4 uses around 60 to 110W, so perhaps 200W is an overestimation...

Anyway if we say a laptop uses 50W and a desktop 200W, you would save 150W by using the laptop instead of the desktop. If a kWh costs 12p, then the 150W power saving would translate to 1.8p every hour.

So if you use a laptop for an average of 3 hours a day every day for a year saving 150W of power (compared to a desktop), then you'd save £19.71 over a year. If the laptop cost £500 to buy, you would need to be using it for over 25 years before recouping the purchase price in energy savings.

gino_76ph wrote: »

will turning off the screen or putting my laptop on sleep mode save me on electricity? or changing my extension cords to something more eco-friendly do anything?

Turning off the screen and spinning down the hard drives after a period of inactivity will save energy. Using sleep mode (suspend-to-RAM) still uses power, but less than when the machine is "fully" on; hibernate mode (suspend-to-disk) should use virtually no power at all.

gino_76ph wrote: »

if i use my laptop for say 8-10 hours a day with 4 hours sometimes on non-stop would that have an impact on my bills?

If you changed from using a desktop for an average of 8hrs/day to using a laptop for the same time, saving around 150W of power, that would translate to a monetary saving of about 14.4p a day or £52.56 a year.

Hope that helps...

Hammyman

NeverAgain wrote: »

I spilled a teaspoonful of Coke on the keyboard of my laptop, which wrote-off the whole machine.

The same accident with a desktop would have cost me at most £10 for a new keyboard.

More likely nothing, because the damage was to the laptop's internals underneath the keyboard, not the keyboard itself.

If you'd bought a corporate spec Thinkpad T or X series it would have had drain holes through the keyboard and this would not have happened...

:p

Oh and those small Atom based cubes are basically desktop versions of netbooks along with all the frustration of the lack of speed.

Norman_Castle

Turning off the screen and spinning down the hard drives after a period of inactivity will save energy. Using sleep mode (suspend-to-RAM) still uses power, but less than when the machine is "fully" on; hibernate mode (suspend-to-disk) should use virtually no power at all.

My desktop pc uses a suprisingly high 32 watts in standby. It also uses 6 watts while off but still plugged in.

Edit, I have just found out how to put it into hibernate mode. In windows xp,
click start>turn off, you then have the options of stand by, turn off, restart. if you press the shift key, stand by becomes hibernate. In hibernate my computer uses 6 watts.
If the option to hibernate does not appear go to control panel>power options>hibernate, and tick the box.

gino_76ph

In Power settings i have set my laptop to Sleep whenever i close the lid. but like you said is Hybernate better? i sometimes close the lid/screen and then use my laptop again for say after 30 or 60 minutes.

what do you say guys?