You will get the VA, not the watts. They are not the same except for a pure resistance load like a light bulb. They are not the same because of "power factor". If you want the cost of using anything with a motor you need to know the watts.
The study mentioned below had to do with wear and tear on the drive, not power consumption. How much is your down time and data loss worth? This really came about over AS/400s where the loss of one drive meant the loss of all data in that storage array because they used scatter store across all drives at the same time..
The advantage of a Kill a Watt meter is that it records over time. It takes fluctuating load into consideration, especially important on refrigerators and freezers that have a varying load over time, from nothing to full power with compressor and defrost equipment in use. A spot check will not give the complete story. Also, no splitting of the cord is required.
Your system works well with simple load that are constant when on.
I wouldn't mind if we stayed on DST all year. The worst part of it is in the fall when we go back to standard time. My internal clock doesn't like waking up earlier.
um, that's the spring. and I hate it too...
nate
I knew I was gonna screw that up. What I hate is it getting dark earlier. Leave it dark longer in the AM because I'll sleep through it anyway.
At one time, starting a fluorescent took something like an hour or two off its life. Now it's more like 5-10 minutes, though probably longer if it's used with an old fashioned "glow switch" starter that blinks it afew times before getting it started.
As for incandescents - I'd like a cite for any of those studies saying what you say. Although incandescents often burn out during cold starts, cold starts do surprisingly little damage to most incandescents. What happens is that an aging filament becomes unable to survive a cold start a little before it becomes unable to survive continuous operation. The condition that makes an aging filament unable to survive a cold start is a hot thin spot in the filament - which worsens during operation at a rate that accelerates worse than exponentially.
- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)
Ther study was done at IBM Rochester in the 90s and primarily focused on the 3.5" "Lightning" drive. Hard drives are the most likely thing to fail in a PC and the thing that causes the most grief. (data loss and extended downtime)
That would be fine. The problems are when you keep CHANGING it.
Maybe you realize that DST all the time is the same as no DST at all. Clocks are an hour different, but we'd adapt to that. There'd just be no changes to keep messing things up.
I think that's common. The natural thing is waking up later.
I'm working on a web page that calculates countdowns. DST has really made that a lot more complicated (as one little example, most locations change the offset from UTC by 1 hour for DST. However, there is one exception: Lord Howe Island, where it's .5 hour).
You missed the point. If you are walking away from your machine more than 8 hours you turn it off. Otherwise the study says leave it on. How many times do you power your machine off and on in a day? How often do you back up your data?
Close, but not exactly. DST gives me (in winter) a dark morning and light driving home in the evening. Standard time gives me more light in the morning and I drive home in the dark. My preference is to function on the same time as DST. If I was on the opposite side of my time zone, I'd be rather close to what DST is here. My preference is to have the winter dark in the AM. I did that by changing my hours at work but the rest of the world does not seem to want to comply to my personal choices for everything.
People often state a preference, but that may not be the same as we see it in different parts of the same time zone or the northern versus southern latitudes. At work I have the luxury of coming and going as I please, but most do not.
Getting up earlier and leaving work earlier is what does that.
Getting up later and leaving work later does that.
Meaning you'd like to do things later in the day. Apparently, a lot of people feel like that.
That's good. Do it as you please. That's a lot better that supporting this mind game that claims to alter time, but does not (and can not) do such a thing.
Why do you believe that? I have close over a dozen bad drives here and they virtually all spun up and ran quietly. Some wouldn't come ready and some would report in fine but fail to format. If I had to pick one common denominator it would be a Western Digital label on it. They usually start by losing sectors and quickly degrade to the point that they won't get through a format. WD Diagnostic says "replace drive". I did get a few replaced on warranty. I have taken a few apart and they are pristine looking inside.
When I was at IBM I saw hundreds of bad drives, noisy, did not mean they weren't working.
Because every failed HD I opened showed signs of abrasion where the head touched the drive disk. Just my personal experience, granted it is limited. I should have said most common problems *that I have seen* are mechanical and not electronic. Then again none of them were mine and may have been subjected to physical shock, IE the "Fonzie Fix".
when the drive is turned off normally, the heads are "parked" on a "landing zone" so wear there should not impact any data...
also most computer drives are set up like a screen saver, if the drive is not used for 15 minutes (or whatever time the timer is set for) it parks and spins down automatically..
Mark
I didn't say the drive was parked. I've seen some idiots pound on their pc when it would freeze up. If they didn't hurt anything, a few times I found it just needed all the dust cleaned out, it was overheating.
I've yet to see that as the default setting in any Windows I have used. Most people don't know that setting exists. I've always had to manually change mine to that setting. One exception is if it's a laptop then that would be the normal setting... to save battery life.
:Anybody familiar with them? Is the "EZ" (model P4460) worth an :extra $15 over model P4400? : :I want to see how much electricity my freezers, TV sets, computers, :etc are *really* using, plus check the frequency stability of my :portable generator and that little inverter than I mounted in my truck. : :Thanks, :Bob
Two things:
I.
I bought the P4400 in February of 2008. I left it plugged into a power strip and plugged my desktop computer's power strip (and etc.) plugged into the Kill-a-Watt meter, measuring power draw (watts), for an indefinite time. It stopped working. It came back to life, don't remember the details, but leaving it off and unplugged for a while, it started working somehow. Someone said they thought that the meters aren't designed to be used in this way, so I stopped doing it.
II.
I've found that the P4400 (don't know about the other(s)) doesn't measure low power draw at all accurately. IOW, if your device is drawing
3-4 watts, say, the P4400 doesn't give you anything like an accurate reading. I only know this because I have a far more accurate way of measuring power draw, which I have used for years. The P4400 is a lot easier to use, but my system is much more accurate and I feel I can depend on it more. It's a simple thing I put together for next to nothing:
Using this system I determined that the P4400 is useless for low draw measurement. I don't remember the cutoff where the P4400 starts being useful. I assume that this holds true for all of them and that I don't have a lemon here.
Dan
Email: dmusicant at pacbell dot net
:I guess I'm missing something here. They give you some data, but :other than curiosity, what usefullness does that data serve. Plug a :refrig into one and learn it uses x kw and costs x $ per month. But :there ain't a darn thing you can do about it except buy a new frig. :Ditto for all the other appliances you have in your home. Yeah, I can :see figuring what loads you can put on a generator, but other than :that, what 'useful' data do they provide? : :KC
Depends how deep your pockets are. Some people don't give a damn about
20 watts. Others do. 20 watts costs me about $20/year when drawn 24/7/365. Personally, I want to know.Dan
Email: dmusicant at pacbell dot net
Your "accurate" system measures VA, not Watts. Read up on power factor, the effect of an out-of-phase relationship between volts and amps.
In , D. Musicant wrote in part:
20 watts 24/7/365 costs me $26 per year, in the Pennsylvania portion of the Philadelphia metro area. Chicago and NYC are similar.Philadelphia regular residential rate has a surcharge for using more than 500 KWH per month during air conditioning season - so an eliminatable 20 watt continuous load may cost more like $30 annually.
There is a looming threat for this to increase substantially in 14 months, when a rate regulation affecting me ends. My power company is advertizing this on radio, advising their customers to get into conservation.
- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)
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