I wanted to blog some info on how much power [in my non-scientific trials] you can expect to ‘burn’ from your different types of desktop clients. 

So with the help of Patrice, here is the typical power consumption (in Watts) from hardware we had available at the time of testing:

Type Standby Logged In Max
P4 generic whitebox PC - ~95 ~182
HP 7800 PC ~9 ~71 ~106
Acer 3700 PC ~9 ~70 ~90
HP 7700 PC ~9 ~81 ~147
HP NX 6120 Laptop ~9 ~24 ~36
Acer TMC 312 Laptop ~7 ~22 ~55
Lenovo X61 Laptop ~7 ~17 ~54

 

A few quick notes:  These non scientific results were measured using a power meter from Jaycar; In Australia we use ~240v; when testing the desktop hardware we excluded the monitor (add another ~22w for a 17" LCD); and all desktops were running windows. 

Obviously more watts = more $$$, if you don’t know exactly how much you pay for power (and your power provider here in Australia can’t seem to tell you), you can try the Artog Website.

I still have to write Part II, but the point I wanted to make here is power consumption does vary between computers.  A couple of watts on a single computer, might not be such a big deal, but a couple of watts across a 100 computers (or more) over a couple of years can potentially be a big deal.

Furthermore, power consumption varies on the role the computer performs (Jeff Atwood has a great breakdown in his post "How Much Power Does My Laptop Really Use" and again in "When Hardware is Free, Power is Expensive").  I’m sure at some level we know that, but it’s not until you see a table like this that you start to get the old noggin’ thinking.