RE: All-in-one PC/TV

["Pauls Hotmail" <paul_gordon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hmm... I had thought of that, but IME even if its 95% reliable,
Windows will
*always* occasionally fail to wake up properly from a standby mode. I've
had
so many odd things happen to me so many times that I rarely bother to
enable
or use standby modes in windows these days.. I've not seen anything yet to
convince me that W7 is any better in this respect.

Also, part of my plan is also to have a 4-way socket strip that is run off
a
CBUS relay module, into which will be plugged all the various things that
normally sit on standby and which can quite reasonably be powered down
completely when not needed... - I used to do this with X10, but again, it
wasn't 100% reliable (like CBUS is!), - invariably X10  would power down
OK,
but then not power up again on command. - That gets pretty annoying after
scrabbling around on the floor under the table I can tell you!

Using this, I would automatically power off things like the screen & PC
(the
current PC still draws about 15W even when supposedly turned OFF!). This
would be controlled by Comfort so these "standby devices"
downstairs
automatically get switched fully off at night when we've all gone to bed,
and standby power is restored when the 1st person gets up the following
morning, so that the devices are all there ready & waiting to be used
conveniently by their remotes... - That's the one thing that arses me off
about the green lobby telling me to turn everything off at the wall at
night... firstly its usually bl00dy difficult to get to the mains switch,
and secondly, I can't then use the remote to turn things on in the morning
without getting out of bed... - Isn't automation supposed to rid us of this
"slave to the machine" paradigm? - the greens seem to want us to
go back to
it... :-(

Paul G.



-----Original Message-----
From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx [mailto:ukha_d@xxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Peer Oliver Schmidt
Sent: 10 December 2009 11:18
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ukha_d] All-in-one PC/TV

Hello Paul,

> Looking for recommendations for an all-in-one PC for the kitchen to
replace
> the current setup of a separate LCD TV/Monitor and shuttle PC sitting
next
> to it...

[..]

> This is because I don't want to have to keep the
> PC running 24x7 just so that I can watch TV, (wastes too much
electrickery),
> and I also don't want to have to wait for a couple of minutes for
Windows
to
> start up every time I want to watch the news whilst having my
breakfast...

with todays PCs I would rethink the approach. The energy usage of a TV
in Standyby mode is not much higher that the standby you will get from a
TV set. And waking up from standby ain't much longer than it takes my
old CRT to get to life either ;)

I would go the full PC route, and use a build-in PC card, and use the
energy saving modes that are available these days on PCs.

Do the math, and see how much difference you get.
--
Best regards

Peer Oliver Schmidt
PGP Key ID: 0x83E1C2EA


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