Auto Sleep/Shutdown

Your iMac should use less power than 1-2 light bulbs. At the max, running the processor, HHD, CD etc. at full bore. Letting it go into sleep saves considerable power, so sutting it off vs. sleeping won't save you much power, just give you longer wake up times. I have no idea how much your family pays for power, but if 2 computers can raise your bill that much, you must have one power hungry PC. I'm betting that it's not your computers making that jump, and even so a 10% jump on a bill of $50-100 is only several dollars. It's not like you leave the heater on 85degF all winter do you?

Jon.

No one should be protected from the effects of his own stupidity. - Anton Szandor LaVey in 1988 (There is a certain irony in this quote... :p)

If your iMac is truly asleep, it should draw a VERY small amount of power. It's about the same as it being off, really.

To put it in perspective, my iBook's battery is just about dead. If I run the computer off of the battery, I get about 15 minutes of use out of it before it shuts off. However, when it's sleeping I get about 2 days worth, that is 48 hours, worrth of sleep time before it will die on me.

So in other words, there isn't going to be any difference between shutting the iMac down and making it sleep. In fact, it may draw more power in some cases, because starting up a computer draws more current than normal running time.

James M. Baker
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Computer Nerd
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My site

even when shutdown the iMac will still draw some power ... the only time its truly off is when its unplugged from the wall ...

as for whats causing the rise ... the PC might be to blame ... do you leave it on alot of the time :? ... PCs usually have a bigger PSU than macs ... and does the PC have a CRT :? ... that would also draw quite abit ...

TOM

Get a watt meter and prove it to him. Plus if he really cares about the bill suggest that he spend the money to reduce the bill elsewhere such as getting low power light bulbs.

Besides he'll probably forget about it in less than a week. My mom used to get so picky about the bill she'd turn off the VCR (which draws almost nothing) but it never lasted more than a week before she started to ignore it

I forgot to ask, but is the increase between that month and the ones before it, or that same month from last year? Many companies estimate the bill for a couple moths, then come out and read the meter to see where the actual usage is. They then make an adjustment for the past three months of usage for the thrid months bill. If they underestimated the power used, then the bill would be higher than the past few months. If the bill is higher than the bill last year, check the watt-hour readings (NOT estimates, use the adjusted bill that they read the meter on to figgue/average the usage for those months) and see if the usage went up or if it was the rate or any various fee that raised the bill.

Him getting mad that the computer is on a lot isn't really related to the powerbill I'd bet. There are other reasons he might want it shut off, tottally unrelated to the bill, but more related to social/studying issues. Besides, the family can probably save all the money in the difference of the bill by not eating out one night in the month or some simple thing like that. People who complain about a $5 increase in their utilities and then go spend $50 on a night out kinda bug me.

Jon.

No one should be protected from the effects of his own stupidity. - Anton Szandor LaVey in 1988 (There is a certain irony in this quote... :p)

I don't know about the iMac, but I know the replacement power supply for a dual g4 (which, minus the display on the iMac, should draw a lot more power) was 330W. If you're paying $0.15/kW, that's a little high... that means at peak energy usage, which would require maxing out your optical drives at the very least as stock machines never draw their full capacity,is $0.05/hr worth or so. With the machine in sleep, you draw less than 1% of that. If you payed $0.50 a month extra for having your computer on sleep instead of off, you'd be paying more than expected.

CRTs, on the other hand, draw LOTS of power. I don't know the specs offhand, but... it's a considerable number

I did some testing (having a friend watch the meter) while I turned on and off electric equipment, trying to determine where the biggest draws were from... the old 21" TV given to me by another friend apparently uses more electricity than the central (electric) heat (its a small place).

I bet just a few extra minutes a day of CRT use, whether for a TV or multiple TV's or for a computer or all on at once, could easily increase an electric bill 10%.

I think also a rule of thumb is that anything that generates heat, either for primary use or as a by product, eats electricity in huge quantities (stove tops, hair driers, irons, clothes dryer, TV's, tube amplifiers, water heater, etc.).

I hope to someday configure one of these old world boxes I have to headlessly "broadcast" cable feed using Darwin Streaming Server and Airport to my laptop so I can watch cable wirelessly through my powerbook flatscreen, as I am confident it would use considerably less electricity than a regular TV. I am waiting to find a decent and reasonably priced fw video capture device. Also, I'm hoping someone does this first and posts easy instructions.

But I don't beleive that there is an option to "Shut Down instead of sleep, unless you were to write an AppleScript to do so. I am pretty ignorant when it comes to AppleScript, so I can't help you there, but I believe that would be an option. You may want to google it to see if someone has already written such a 'Script.

Option 2 would be to set the "Schedule" tab in the Energy Saver Pane to shut the computer down at a certain time.

Option 3 would be to shut the computer down when you are done using it.

There once was a man from Nantuckett
who like to drink beer from a bucket.
One day he fell down,
an' spilt beer on the ground,
and when he saw, he said, "Aw, shucks, that was Guiness."

Whats a "jack***es"???

iMac266 (Strawberry), G3 1400 and the G3 IIsi. I want a Tortoise...

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