Laptops

[JohnB]

wot.. no cd/dvd burner? Slim is nice but thats taking it too far. A triumph of Jobsian style over function... like designing a car thats so small you have to have the engine on a trailer at the back. Rather silly in my book. a CD/DVD burner is an essential part of a laptop and should be integral, not dangling off of a USB port.

In the 8 months I've been travelling I think I've used my CD burner twice. Once to backup all the photos I've taken to be kept by my brother, and once to copy a music CD (perfectly legal!) for a friend. The rest of the time it's only been used for watching DVDs because I haven't got a telly. When I had a house I don't think I ever used it, as I used my network to copy stuff to other computers.

[isenhand]

The reliability of laptops, in my experience, is low.

I've not found that:

My current work laptop is nearly 4 years old (the touchpad is a bit dodgy, but you can plug in a USB mouse to solve this, and the 'G' key has just fallen off, but other than that it's fine).

My current laptop at work has also been working fine. However, both laptops at home have had to go in for repair several times within the first 3 years. Most of the laptops here at work (we have about 100) have had to go for repair at least once. Compare that with desktop PCs. I don?t think I have ever had to repair a PC.

.ui

[phobos]

wot.. no cd/dvd burner? Slim is nice but thats taking it too far. A triumph of Jobsian style over function... like designing a car thats so small you have to have the engine on a trailer at the back. Rather silly in my book. a CD/DVD burner is an essential part of a laptop and should be integral, not dangling off of a USB port.

The Macbook Air has the capability though to use any CD/DVD drive on the network as its own, so you dont have to buy a plug in unless you dont have another PC.

I will concede the screen is a tad small though.

[Andy Hunt]

CDs are obsolete (and made of oil). And CD drives use loads of leccy - your laptop battery will run down in no time playing CDs/DVDs.

Memory sticks and USB hard drives are the way to go for all kinds of data.

[Eternal Sunshine]

Damn, the thought of no longer having a PC in the not too far distant future gets me down. Only had a decent PC for the past 3 years and it's hard to imagine life without the internet flightsims, astronomy programs etc.etc.

I think this may be the least of our worries. I can't leave the house without my mobile phone, but managed fine for 30 years without one at all. Our priorities will shift if things get so bad that PCs are unavailable.

[Steve Houseman]

not directly relevant to the OP , but I had/have a large leccy bill and last
year bought a power meter from maplins to try to determine where it was going .
average daily usage was ~25kwh , hopefully a little less now.

One major item of this was computer usage with my box (linux) being on
~14hrs/day and maybe similar for my sons box (windows) .
My notes imply that my box was using 72w on glass monitor (1600x1200) +
126->150w on the puter giving ~220w * 14 -> 3.1 kwh/day
and probably similar for my sons box , except he had a TFT monitor which used
17w .

I checked out converting my wifes old toshiba laptop to linux and deli linux
was recommended and that was ok ... but the screen is irritatingly small ,
but it only uses 20w !

I had read that it was possible to use a mobile version of a processor in a
standard mobo, so investigated that plus other stuff .
I seem to recall that some people are (or were) making ordinary boxes using
mobile technology with standard boxes.

The investigations are detailed on my page of notes on what I did :

http://www.houseman.demon.co.uk/acpipage2

I am still running it today , tho keep looking at tft monitors.
The box saves 50w over what it had before (40w for mobile cpu + 14w for low
power graphics cards ) ... ~ 0.7 unit/day and ~255 kwh/year ie should have
paid for new processor !

When doing this sort of thing , it can become a little obsessive , trying to
trim another 8w (or whatever) off the power

Cheers,

Steve

[RenewableCandy]

When doing this sort of thing , it can become a little obsessive , trying to
trim another 8w (or whatever) off the power

Yeah I know the feeling

Going on the quick-and-dirty conversion of: 40W on all day = 1 unit approx., and looking at your numbers, I can't see anything like 25 units a day! I wonder if there are some easier wins elsewhere in your abode...unless of course you happen to love taking 'puters to bits and swapping them round, in which case do carry on !

Put it this way there are 4 of us in this house, one laptop (which I'm quite convinced my other 1/2 never turns off) and 2 'puters plus the usual complement of LSD (Labour-Saving Devices eg cooker clotheswasher doshwisher etc plus electric pump on our gas heating) and I think we're "going for the burn" if we use more than 10 units per day.

[Steve Houseman]

10 units per day ... heaven !
ok , had to dig out my old bits , some of these are measured and some estimated

Code: Select all

kitchen stuff ...
-  TD ... obviously variable but measure 2.5/d ie 1hr on       2.5
-  w/m   costs more in soap powder I think.                           1.0
-  fridge - need to check                                                            0.4
-  (chest) freezer  43.75kwh/408hrs ->17 days 43.75/17.0   2.6
-  oven        have measured and is ~ 1kwh/day                      1.0
-  kettles     guess                                                                       1.0
                                                                                                     ----
                                                                                                     8.5

bedroom
-  water bed heater  (summer)                                               2.1
                                                                                                      10.6
lounge
-  tv stack    200w  10hrs                                                          2.0
                                                                                                     12.6

-  pauls stack 200w   5                                                              1.0
                                                                                                                                                 

lighting
      bathroom 14 hrs @ 60w                                1.0
      lounge   7-12am 5h @ 60w                             0.3
               7-12pm 5h @ 60w                                   0.3
      pauls bedroom 4-12 8h @17w                       0.2
      study         5-12pm 7h @ 17w                         0.1
      sundry others                                                   0.5
                                                                                 ----
                                                                                 3.1
                                                                                      16.7

computers  :  as was , 220w * 14h                       3.1
                       170w * 12h                                      2.0
                                                                                ----
                                                                                 5.1  21.8

central heating : boiler ccts, pumps etc ?
 cant easily measure this as there is no plug , 
  ie all hardwired.                                                   0.2
                                                                                        22.0

dont think this will format well (?).

So still some units missing, but is in the ballpark.

Several points
- I take much more care to ensure lights are turned off and harass the family.
Think only solution to this would be to get them to pay the leccy bill.
- er indoors has a fear of fluorescents , from a australian study done several decades ago , so not allowed cfl's in places
that she goes into
- water bed - maybe get a biggger cover for during the day
- fridge freezer + fridge could be rolled into one modern FF at probably one unit per day
- put as much washing on line or on rack as possible , but again er indoors has limits on what she allows
- I try to minimise the amount of washing to as few larger loads as possible, but again there are problems with that.
- try hard to just use as little water in kettle as needed , but when others put kettle on, could also brew up for rest of road .

So is a hard struggle with unwilling participants

Cheers,

Steve

[Andy Hunt]

I too have found that my desktop is a proper energy guzzler, unfortunately I can't do without it for making music, but I have one of these intelliplug things which kills all the peripherals when you turn off the PC.

Otherwise we use laptops, I have an old Toshiba Satellite Pro for web access, we have a newer one downstairs which we also use as the TV, CD player, DVD player etc etc etc.

But quite often if my OH wants the internet, she has set up her 'phone so that it will log onto our wireless router so we don't even have to power up the laptop for the www.