Wisconsin Winter, leaky window, electricity consumption

[Joe]

Well, answering this requires backstory.  Two computers in my house, mine and my brothers, are on constantly. I allow mine to go into a low-power mode while not in use, but nevertheless, it's always on. My brother's computer hosts a dialup internet connection, so the hard-drive may spin itself down, but it's always in a mode that at least the RAM, Processor, and Modem are all active. I have dual-monitors (19' and 15' CRTs) which are turned off while not in use, and my brother has a single 15' LCD.

Also, my bedroom is in the basement, and since my bed is near the window, I can sometimes feel cold air. That wouldn't lead me to suspicion, except that the other side of my room where my desk is, which should theoretically be colder (At least I think, because it's underground.. my room is sort of in a hill), isn't. My windows span nearly wall to wall and nearly floor to ceiling, and two of the three sections are openable. The biggest clue that leads me to thinking they leak is the fact that the middle, unopenable window is the warmest area along that wall.

So, the first question is, is there anything I can do to our computers to make them consume less electricity (I'll turn a deaf ear to "just turn them off", it's out of the question)? For example, on my old Mac I set the option of spinning down the hard drive after 5 minutes of non-use, and shutting the screen completely off after 10 (irrelevant, since they're external, but eh?). Also, I think I can set my computer to go into standby after an hour or so of complete inactivity, except for just spin-down, etc.. so I might try that. Also, is there any less expensive form of a WattsUp (a little power-strip type thing that measures how much energy things use) that I could run my rig through to show my dad what little power I really use and get him off my back?

My current plan is to browse the control panel on my box for any power-saving options, just to give my dad the placebo that I'm seriously working on cutting back on power (okay, and saving a little bit, immesurable probably, of power). I also told my dad about the window and I'm waiting on him to get some of that stuff you hang over it and blow-dry into place, so hopefully I'll have a bit more insulation with my leaky window.

My main questions were, how much power do our computers consume, compared to a furnace maintaining 70 degrees in a house in Wisconsin (yes, that's relevant, it's -10 outside right now, and yes, I know 70 is ridiculous, I turned it down to 68 a few minutes ago)? Any tips you can give me as far as Windows XP power-saving mechanisms? Linux? Is the window thingy really going to work? Etc.

[RoMi]

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/7657/ for the power monitor.  As far as the computers go, I have no idea.

[Joe]

Yeah, but it's still kinda expensive. :(.

[Skywing]

Ditch the CRTs if you spend a significant amount of time with them turned on.  Those will use way more power than a similarly-sized LCD display.

My 20.1" VA2012wb LCD has a 47 watt average operational power consumption; a typical 19" CRT will be using somewhere around twice that according to some cursory research.

If you've got a modern enough processor to support dynamic cycle throttling (e.g. SpeedStep), I'd enable that as well.

Don't enable screen savers in general (just set the monitor to turn off instead), and especially stay away from any "cool" screen savers with 3D effects that might use your GPU.

Other things can add up over time as well.  For example, seemingly little things like getting in the habit of leaving the room lights off while working with your computer will lead to cost savings over time.  (Unless you have the brightness on your display turned way down, you shouldn't have any trouble with not having extraneous ambient light sources.)

In general, I'd also look at replacing aging computer hardware, as most old stuff was typically not designed with power efficiency in mind.  Physical limits on circuit size necessitate more power efficient designs in today's hardware (not to mention real market demand for less power draw).  This applies to non-mobile computers as well; there's a big push for lower power consumption in servers for datacenter usage, for instance.