On Mon, 19 Jun 2017 13:07:30 -0400, Paul wrote:

| Larc wrote:
| This is a bit off topic, but I have a question that should benefit from answers here.
|
| My main computer is usually turned on shortly after I get up in the morning and not
| shut down until just before I go to bed at night. I've also been turning off the
| monitor, but am wondering if it would be better -- or at least no worse -- to just
| leave it on. If too much of Windows loads before I switch it on, some visual
| settings are affected. I'd like to avoid chances of that by leaving it on. Specs
| show my monitor draws only 0.5W in sleep mode, which is only 0.2W more than it draws
| when turned off. Are there any significant negative factors in leaving it on?
|
| Larc
|
| You can set the time constant on screen blanking, in the
| Power control panel, and that will blank the screen after
| 20 minutes or whatever. If you move the mouse, it lights up
| again.
|
| That leaves the power running on the monitor, but as you say,
| it only draws half a watt. On the old CRT monitors, doing this
| (surprisingly) saves no power at all. My old monitor would
| still draw 200W with a blank screen. But LCD monitors are
| pretty good.
|
| Both LEDs and CFL tubes in computer monitors, have a limited
| life. You can pretend for the sake of "orders of magnitude",
| that the failure time is the same. The lifetime of the part
| that lights up, might be 20K to 25K hours, and blanking it
| will pay off a bit. On an LCD monitor with CFL tubes, usually
| the inverter fails before the CFL tubes do, and if it
| doesn't light up before it hits 20K hours, that's probably
| a defective inverter.
|
| It doesn't really matter whether it's in the 0.5W state
| or 0 watt state. If you do flip a switch to "isolate" the monitor
| from the mains, then there is less risk a lightning transient
| could come up the power cable and get the monitor. But I don't
| worry about stuff like that. If bad weather is forecast, I might
| isolate the computer room for safety, and disconnect the ADSL
| phone line. But induced lightning effects can still blow up
| the LAN ports if I do that, so that's still not a guarantee.
|
| Paul

Thanks, Paul. A big plus for LCD over CRT is the power factor. My 27" 4K monitor
draws less than 30W in full operation. I already have things set to put the monitor
in sleep mode after 45 minutes of inactivity. But I'm more concerned with turning
the monitor off or leaving it in sleep mode when the computer is shut down. I'm
thinking from your reply that it really makes no difference as far as the monitor is
concerned.

Larc