Microsoft study says your PC is a slacker [BT broadband office]

Microsoft study says your PC is a slacker

Posted 28 March 2007 at 10:02AM by Simon Dickson in IT systems and support

A new study by Microsoft and PC Pro claims that almost a third of people leave their desktop computer switched on at the end of the working day, and a quarter leave it on over the weekend too.

The study showed that 'light' tasks, such as typing documents or answering emails, account for roughly 40% of computer use - with the next most common activity, taking up 30% of your typical PC's day, being 'doing nothing'. (It almost makes you wonder why we worry so much about buying new PCs with greater memory and faster processors - I've got a dusty old Dragon 32 somewhere which is just as good at 'doing nothing'.)

The study is really just an excuse to promote the new power-saving features in Windows Vista: your PC will automatically fall into 'sleep mode' after an hour of inactivity, potentially saving up to £46 on your electricity bill per PC per year, not to mention the resulting reduction in 'carbon footprint'. Microsoft promises that it's faster and 'more reliable' (their words, not mine) than the equivalent 'standby' feature in Windows XP.

It's not the first time 'standby power' has hit the headlines this past week or so. Sky have just announced that their 2.1 million Sky+ set-top boxes will automatically switch themselves to 'standby' after two hours of inactivity between 11pm and 4am, as part of a new software update being rolled out over the next few months. And on this week's Dragon's Den, the last in the series, all five members of the panel were persuaded to back Peter Ensinger's 'Standby Saver' gadget, which uses a rechargeable battery to mimic the effect of standby, at much reduced power consumption.

Tags: carbon footprint, dragon's den, Microsoft, sky, standby, Windows Vista

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Comments

1. At March 28, 2007 2:13 PM, Stuart Singleton-White wrote:

All this helping us to go on stand by is all well and good but the fact is stand by is still consuming power and burning carbon. Its like leaving your mobile phone charger plugged in and switched on when you are not charging your phone; you are still using power!

What would be really good would be products which can easily be switched off. Now that would be a break through worth commenting on.

2. At March 28, 2007 8:04 PM, Paul Howard wrote:

I have a good idea for you. All this fuss about global warming due to man made carbon emmisions is very over rated.and The truth of the matter is that we are not adding to the problem and the greenhouse gasses are a natural effect, therefore we should not worry about the planet as it will take care of itself and only be concerned if we are so tight for cash that a few extra pounds of electricity each year is so much of a problem when we dont worry about buying the latest high flying PCs etc.

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