Do you save money on your electric bill?

[wonderboy1953]

Many moons ago I heard that a computer uses about the same amount of electricity as a light bulb.

Nowadays I see ads saying computer systems use even less electricity than ever before which makes me yawn. Maybe your experience or knowledge can change my mind about the efficiency of computer systems in the way they draw upon electricity and how much money thay can save me on the electric bill as opposed to say, 10 years ago.

 

[root]

ok... it breaks down a bit like this.

those estimates only ever looked at 100W lightbulbs, incandescent ones, most people used 60W lighbulbs anyway.

your average computer today uses a lot more than that!

the thing is, now that energy saving is all the rage, and people want their laptops to last longer, computing in general has gotten a bit more green, but it's mostly still not below 100W (whilst most lightbulbs are now CF type and run at 9w (possibly lower).

basically, computers that's mainstream ones, are still burning lots of juice.
you can take some care over the system you build and trade off performance for power saving. though to be honest, if you're running your system all the time chances are that you;re using is as a server, in which case something like a sheva plug is probably a good buy (power consumption around 8w).

There used to be a whole load of sites that would tell you how much power each component in a system used, (I imagine that some PSU manufacturers still have these).

but a average CPU is still going to be burning at least 50W on it's own. (5 times more than todays average light bulb) and only fractionally less than a 60w bulb which most people would have had.