[OT] "How Green Is Your House" and TV watching

It isn't just the apparent relative costs. We live in a culture where enquiry into how things work is actively discouraged along with their repair. This operates at many levels. Peer pressure on frowns on kids that have had things fixed by their dads (can't the mean ol' skinflint buy you a new one then). Schools no longer teach proper engineering skills. The government piles on steadily more restrictions on what non-tradespeople are allowed to do. Insurance companies try to weasel out of payments if something ( not even related to the claim) is not of standard manufacture.

Agreed.

LOL!

Tipping waitresses was a very enjoyable pasttime in olde englande but I rather suspect it's illegal in the USA today.

No, you are allowed to tip a waitress, but cow tipping is still a crime.

800 bit modem?

Well, I don't know what speed early modems operated at - I wasn't on- line then!

I started on 2400, but I've heard of 300 baud.

In 1977, when I started in what became known as IT, our modems were

1200/75 (that is, 1200 baud in one direction and 75 baud in the other) because that was all the bandwidth the technology of the day could squeeze out of a 'phone line. The 75 baud back channel allowed you to reverse the line when you needed the "fast" channel in the other direction. The modems were the size of a shoe-box, weighed 20 or 30lbs and could only be *rented* from BT.

snipped-for-privacy@ukmisc.org.uk (Huge) wrote in news:di85dl$idp$ snipped-for-privacy@anubis.demon.co.uk:

This has already been done to death in a recent thread here (uk.comp.homebuilt) but in a nutshell the conclusion was that any switching them on and off several times a day makes no difference since computers are invariably replaced long before the adverse effects of power cycling would be felt.

There is also evidence that leaving a CRT on continuously (as opposed to using standby mode or off) will actually cut its life by a factor of 2 or 3 because the tube life is dependent mainly on how many hours it is on, with the phosphor brightness halving every 10-15000 hours.

Not necessarily. Big LCD or worse, plasma TVs use considerable amounts of power. A CRT TV with 100 Hz refresh also, as do wide-screen CRTs. The best I could find when shopping for a new 70cm TV two years ago was a Philips 50 Hz with 4:3 screen , which uses 60 W active and 1 W in standby; and it has a real "off" switch which we always use. And the next one up (50 Hz, 4:3) was

80 or 90 W, all others were (sometimes considerably) more. If a TV is on 3 hrs/day on average and uses 60 W less than another model, you save 3 * 60 * 365 = 65 kWh/year .

I've measure some of mine. A new Aiwa small audio system uses 9 W in standby, in 'eco' mode is about 0.5 W. A Yamaha livingroom stereo takes also around 11 W in standby, and you cannot switch it off. A Sony VCR uses 12 W in standby. A Whirlpool microwave 10W in standby. All these come from the display type, which is not LCD but old vacuum-tube type technology which requires a filament to be on if you want to see something. I'm sure if you have a clock radio with this kind of display it is just as bad (I buy only LED-based clock radios). 10 W on standby means 85 kWh/year! I find this ridiculous. I am not interested in yet another clock on the micowave or stereo or video. I would favor legislation that makes it mandatory to supply the standby power consumption in kWh/year , that would get people's attention, I'm sure.

Mat Nieuwenhoven

That's right, big large plasma screen, surround sound hi-fi speakers, dvd player and Sky Plus box all connected together by what looks like three plates of spaghetti and what furniture there is knows its place.

Bliss!

It's been done to death in lots of places.

Not "invariably". Only in houses which suck Bill Gates' c*ck.

Sometimes it's hard to tell, so I tip 'em anyway. ;-)

Certainly.

Even though I have the expertice necessary, I wouldn't waste my time on a $40 VCR. I have far more important things to do with my time (and that includes tipping a beer or two). I don't waste a couple of hours (vs. $19) on a Saturday changing the oil in my car either. I have other "cleaner" things to do, like staining woodwork (this weekend's task, since it was a wash-out).

There's never more than 1 hour's worth of watchable TV per day anyway.

And presumably the notion that criticising the amount of time/energy consumed in watching TV via a TV programme is hypocritical never occurred to her.

Are you asking us or telling us?

Then you should leave your car or truck idling all the time, Everyone knows that most of the wear and tear is done while the engine is warming up. On the other hand, electrolytic capacitors have a limited life and are slowly destroyed by heat. I see a lot of dead PCs with defective electrolytics. I put in about $7 US in new caps and they are ready for a new home.

BTW, I have dozens of PCs in, and around my house. There are three at my computer desk right now, sometimes there are five running at once. There is no way in hell I'll leave them all running all the time. When I finish my home network there will be about three dozen live ports scattered between five buildings. Not only does leaving and unused PC on waste electricity, it makes the air conditioning work harder, so you pay for it twice.

First of all, the speed is specified in Bits Per Second, not bits. The width of the data is specified in Bits. 800 bits would make for a very odd data buss.

Some of the more common speeds are:

75 baud 110 baud 300 baud 1200 baud 2400 baud 4800 baud 9600 baud 14400 baud 28800 baud 33600 baud 57600 baud

Even lower baud rates were used by current loop teletype machines.

BTW, my first hard drive was a full height 5.25" 5 MB that sounded like a vacuum cleaner when it was first powered up.