uptime

[NickStone]

so you unplug them from the wall as well ? if not you are still using some power.

with the lid closed and the box sleeping it is as good(about) as turning it off.

fridge,water heater,electric clock, heck even your TV if not unplugged is still using SOME electricity .

Here in the UK our electrical sockets have switches that turn of the power to that socket so no need to unplug, but if our switches were like yours in the US then yes I would unplug from the socket when not using an electrical item. Also our electrical sockets have three wires - Live, neutral and earth. The earth wire is a safety feature in that should a fault appear in the circuit the excess electricity will run down the earth wire to earth thereby preventing anyone from getting an electrical shock.

I think that's uptown girl

VINNY

I knew that, it was my feeble attempt of a joke.

[GreyGeek]

When I was using a tower back in 2000, I used to leave it on 24/7/365, The tower had a 550 watt power supply. The Sony Triniton monitor consumed 150 watts. My Panosonic 9 pin printer used 100 watts. The UPS used 50 watts, That''s around 750 watts. 18 KWh/day, 540 Kw/mo, or about 6,000 KWh/yr. At 5.cents/KWh $300 per year. My laptop burns 20 watts/hr, My laser printer idles using 5 watts. I turn off my laptop when I am not using it. My laptop is a power hog compared to my iPhone 6, which is on all the time.

[NickStone]

When I was using a tower back in 2000, I used to leave it on 24/7/365, The tower had a 550 watt power supply. The Sony Triniton monitor consumed 150 watts. My Panosonic 9 pin printer used 100 watts. The UPS used 50 watts, That''s around 750 watts. 18 KWh/day, 540 Kw/mo, or about 6,000 KWh/yr. At 5.cents/KWh $300 per year. My laptop burns 20 watts/hr, My laser printer idles using 5 watts. I turn off my laptop when I am not using it. My laptop is a power hog compared to my iPhone 6, which is on all the time.

You were using a 9 pin printer in 2000? I thought people stopped using them by mid 1990's.

I had a HP ink jet printer in 2000 and I still have a HP ink printer now just a different model.

[GreyGeek]

You were using a 9 pin printer in 2000? I thought people stopped using them by mid 1990's.

I had a HP ink jet printer in 2000 and I still have a HP ink printer now just a different model.

That Sony VAIO tower, monitor and Panasonic printer were purchased on Dec 27th, 1997. It was expensive enough. The printer was where I saved some money and also could use up that box of form feed paper I had for my previous pin printer. I didn't get my first laptop till 2004.

[vinnywright]

ercut

Here in the UK our electrical sockets have switches that turn of the power to that socket so no need to unplug,

nice ,,,,,now that would be a useful thing.

Also our electrical sockets have three wires - Live, neutral and earth. The earth wire is a safety feature in that should a fault appear in the circuit the excess electricity will run down the earth wire to earth thereby preventing anyone from getting an electrical shock.

ya most of our normal sockets are 3 wire hear as well, the third wire being a ground wire ,,,same as your earth wire .

we also have GFI circuit boxes (if you have money) that would do the same as your "switched socket's" by pressing the "test button"
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu...ctric/gfi.html

I knew that, it was my feeble attempt of a joke.

LOL ,,,, and I knew you knew that

VINNY

[NickStone]

we also have GFI circuit boxes (if you have money) that would do the same as your "switched socket's" by pressing the "test button"
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu...ctric/gfi.html

We also have them as well but we call them consumer units which contain RCD's.

[NickStone]

ya most of our normal sockets are 3 wire hear as well, the third wire being a ground wire ,,,same as your earth wire .

I wrongfully assumed that your electrical circuits didn't have an earth wire as your sockets are designed for plugs with two pins. I wrongfully assumed you just had a live and neutral wire.

[Qqmike]

Outlets with 2 slots: these are in the older homes, like my home (65 years old). All newer work (past a certain date which is ? ) have three-prong, grounded outlets. Older homes can use a ground fault adaptor, as Vinny said. The newer work done on my house does have up-to-date , grounded electrical outlets which I especially made sure were done for the refrigerator, dishwasher, oven, microwave, misc kitchen, and clothes washer and clothes dryer. For the bathrooms, it is best to try to upgrade older homes to the 3-prong grounded, but where that is not readily doable (without rebuilding half the home with big expense), the ground-fault adaptor is the way to go. And, btw, I had an electrician run a new circuit around my house and into my office(s), carrying the 3-wire, so my computers are all grounded. AND ... (yep, it can be a PITA with the older houses) ... I had to run 3-wire (some with 220, 4-wire) in my 2-car garage where I often work with tools (woodworking and lapidary -- lots of motors). (The house is built on a concrete slab, no crawl space, no attic, frame-stucco construction.)

@NickStone: That should give you a picture of how many "common" folk do their electrical in America, mixing older standards with newer codes. :-)

[Feathers McGraw]

I had no idea, I guess this is one of the reasons chargers with swappable prongs are becoming more common... that and you can sell basically the same thing everywhere (mainland Europe, America, UK) for very little extra cost.

[Qqmike]

Wait! There's more!!! In an older home with 2-prong, non-grounded electrical wiring, when you re-do the decorating of a room, say by re-doing baseboard, patching drywall and painting, very often, to upgrade the "look" of your home, you replace the 2-prong, electrical face plates with modern decorator 3-prong outlet face plates (the outer, plastic face plate only--NOT the true wiring inside). Thus, in an older home, when you see a 3-prong outlet, you must ask whether it is a true grounded circuit or not.

[GreyGeek]

... @NickStone: That should give you a picture of how many "common" folk do their electrical in America, mixing older standards with newer codes. :-)

Indeed, it would also correlate, probably quite closely, with house fires caused by faulty electrical wiring.

[Qqmike]

GreyGeek
Indeed, it would also correlate, probably quite closely, with house fires caused by faulty electrical wiring.

I'm not so sure (one could research that--causes of house fires). I have a theory that most house fires are caused by people lighting fires in their house! Like religious candles. Of course, mixing aluminum wiring with copper outlet boxes is a fire problem.

[vinnywright]

vinny@vinny-Bonobo-Extreme:~$ w
 13:30:15 up 28 days, 18:11,  9 users,  load average: 0.07, 0.11, 0.16
USER     TTY      FROM             LOGIN@   IDLE   JCPU   PCPU WHAT
vinny    :0       :0               19Dec14 ?xdm?  16:51m 16.68s init --user
vinny    pts/8    :0               19Dec14  5days  0.04s  0.04s /bin/bash
vinny    pts/10   :0               19Dec14 28days  0.00s  3:02  kdeinit4: kded4 [kdeinit]                      
vinny    pts/2    :0               Wed20   17:19   0.06s  0.06s /bin/bash
vinny    pts/11   :0               02Jan15 10:23   0.27s  0.27s /bin/bash
vinny    pts/12   :0               Fri19   18:05m  0.02s  0.02s /bin/bash
vinny    pts/13   :0               Fri19   12:45m  0.05s  0.05s /bin/bash
vinny    pts/15   :0               Fri19   17:53m  0.04s  0.04s /bin/bash
vinny    pts/16   :0               Fri19    7.00s  0.03s  0.03s /bin/bash

well looks like a sufficient # of packages are ready for updating/upgrading including a new kernel ,,,,,,so reboot time .

The following NEW packages will be installed:
  linux-headers-3.13.0-44 linux-headers-3.13.0-44-generic
  linux-image-3.13.0-44-generic linux-image-extra-3.13.0-44-generic
The following packages will be upgraded:
  coreutils firefox firefox-locale-en flashplugin-installer freshplayerplugin
  gir1.2-gtk-3.0 google-chrome-stable libavcodec56-ffmpeg libavformat56-ffmpeg
  libavresample2-ffmpeg libavutil54-ffmpeg libc-bin libc-dev-bin libc6
  libc6:i386 libc6-dbg libc6-dev libc6-i386 libcgmanager0 libcgmanager0:i386
  libclutter-gtk-1.0-0 libcurl3 libcurl3:i386 libcurl3-gnutls libgail-3-0
  libgtk-3-0 libgtk-3-bin libgtk-3-common libssl1.0.0 libssl1.0.0:i386
  libswresample1-ffmpeg libswscale3-ffmpeg libx265-40 libyaml-0-2
  linux-generic linux-headers-generic linux-image-generic linux-libc-dev
  multiarch-support openssl system76-driver system76-driver-nvidia unzip
  usb-creator-common usb-creator-kde xul-ext-ubufox
46 upgraded, 4 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 179 MB of archives.
After this operation, 273 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y

VINNY

[vinnywright]

vinny@vinny-Bonobo-Extreme:~$ w
 14:22:40 up 3 min,  4 users,  load average: 0.59, 0.66, 0.30
USER     TTY      FROM             LOGIN@   IDLE   JCPU   PCPU WHAT
vinny    :0       :0               14:20   ?xdm?  21.00s  0.03s init --user
vinny    pts/4    :0               14:21    1:31   0.02s  0.02s /bin/bash
vinny    pts/8    :0               14:21    1:02   0.00s  1.33s kdeinit4: kded4 [kdeinit]                      
vinny    pts/2    :0               14:22    0.00s  0.02s  0.00s w

looks like time for some selective purging as well

Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  libjavascriptcoregtk-1.0-0 libmkv0 libwebkitgtk-1.0-0
  libwebkitgtk-1.0-common linux-headers-3.13.0-32
  linux-headers-3.13.0-32-generic linux-headers-3.13.0-37
  linux-headers-3.13.0-37-generic linux-headers-3.13.0-39
  linux-headers-3.13.0-39-generic linux-headers-3.13.0-40
  linux-headers-3.13.0-40-generic linux-image-3.13.0-32-generic
  linux-image-3.13.0-37-generic linux-image-3.13.0-39-generic
  linux-image-3.13.0-40-generic linux-image-extra-3.13.0-32-generic
  linux-image-extra-3.13.0-37-generic linux-image-extra-3.13.0-39-generic
  linux-image-extra-3.13.0-40-generic
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

VINNY

[oshunluvr]

I'm not so sure (one could research that--causes of house fires). I have a theory that most house fires are caused by people lighting fires in their house! Like religious candles. Of course, mixing aluminum wiring with copper outlet boxes is a fire problem.

Wiring and electric lighting are the 4th leading cause, 1 through 3 being Cooking, Heating, and Intentional. Candles are a measly #8

And actually if anyone really cares: shorting the electrical wire causes heat and sparks and that causes fires. Since the "earth" wire and the return (or neutral) both go to the exact same place in your wiring panel, I doubt the third wire helps with fires. In fact, one might argue since it's one more place the powered wire can short to, it might be less safe with regards to fires. The safety in the circuit comes from the breaker or fuse that's supposed to disconnect the circuit when it's overloaded by a short (or too much drain) before with wire melts and causes real problems.

The main purposes of the "ground" or "earth" wire is to prevent shocks. It dissipates excess charge usually caused by static buildup in the use of electric appliances and also that's in the air all around us, thus it reduces the chance of arcing, and if there is errant current in a metal cased appliance (for one example) the ground wire dissipates it and reduces the chance of you getting a shock. Most light fixtures, small appliances, and some switches don't even use a ground wire because it's not mandated.

When you live in an old house like we did - 1911 - the knob-and-tube wiring is very fire safe as long as you don't muck about with it. The current wire is 18 inches away from the return for most of it's length. The danger comes in because the insulation is fabric and rots after 50-60 years. Once it's disturbed it breaks away. However, the induced magnetic field plays havoc with wifi signals