Hopefully, you've got your computer on a surge protector. If you don't, you should go get one to protect your investment. If you do, probably the most useful measurement is that of the whole power strip. How much energy is your whole desk drawing at any one time? How much energy is your whole desk drawing when everything is off and you've gone to sleep for the night?

Plugged into my power strip, I have:

Uniden phone charger
LG cell-phone charger
20.1” Soyo monitor
22” Hanns-G monitor
HP PSC1300 printer
Logitech X-530 speakers
My computer, specs listed on the previous page


Now, this is pretty shocking (no pun intended). If you leave everything at your desk off for a whole year, it will cost you just short of $35. That's a whole lot for nothing. As you can see, it is also dramatically better to turn off your computer when you're not there than it is to keep it on. There are some who say that it's better to leave your computer on all the time because the heat cycles deform your chips and the spin-up and down cycles wear on your hard-drives. With the money that you save after a few years of turning your computer off, though, you can buy that new CPU you were going to get anyway. The other results seem very on par as far as components used are concerned, but it's good to see these numbers in the context of money, also.

Continue on as we draw some conclusions…