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Sleep mode is nowhere near 10W. Your average laptop battery is only about 55W-HR, and a laptop will easily last a day or two in sleep-mode with a full-charge. That puts the sleep-mode power draw at 1-2W.
To put that into perspective, a single gallon of gasoline has about 36,600W-HR of energy, enough to power a laptop in sleep mode for two to four years.
To put it still further into perspective, powering all the laptops sold worldwide in a year in sleep mode for a year will use about 25 million gallons of gasoline. This sounds like a lot, but the US alone uses that much gasoline in only 90 minutes...
The power savings from shutting down computers is so phenomenally miniscule it's barely worth even posting about.
Edited 2008-01-11 19:44 UTC
That is an interesting perspective you put this into, but I'd say it still is bigger than zero, which is what you get when you shut off your computer.
This is also true for all the other millions of electric devices people keep running on stand-by for no other reason as to be able to switch it on without getting out of the armchair. Which might add another perspective to your's.
RE[4]: Back to basic first




Member since:
2005-06-29
Multiply 10 watts an hour x billions of users on Earth x years and years of sleep mode and you'll see how much we could have saved of money, fossil energy, and CO2.