The best PC soundcards were made in 1999.

Ron Capik wrote:
wrote:
...ALWAYS the case? I have at least a dozen wallwarts on switched
outlets, warts that are only on when running that system; everything
from printers to netwirk hubs to reverbs to zip drives. My computers
are all on switched outlets and thus draw nothing when not in use.
...thus, as others previously noted, it can be done.

Ron Capik
--

Yea ok, I'll grant you that I'm technically incorrect to say "always".
But the context of what we're talking about is the USA's consumption of
power. And, inarguably, people like you are the minority. Most
americans aren't plugging their wallwarts into power strips and turning
them off. So you get to criticize me for saying "all" when I should
have said "all but one half percent". It's not much of a point.

I could say "all americans wants to be happy" and you can say "no, some
americans are masochists, so they don't ALL want to be happy". And I
say "ok, yes, I'm wrong, you're right. I guess you win then."

Stewart Pinkerton wrote:
On Fri, 10 Dec 2004 04:23:09 -0000, ((null)) wrote:
Franco Del Principe wrote:

Talking about perspective and energy waste in the US:

According to a news program on European TV 60% of total US
fuel consumption goes into military use. Makes you think, eh?

About the orifice they used for that number, sure. The math is simple:
count up the yearly usage of various bits of military hardware in hours,
multiply by the average fuel consumption per hour, and compare with
the same figures for automobiles. [...]

Ahem. Fuel is used for manufacturing things, and for running
establishments, not just for keeping vehicles moving. Look at your
industrial base for serious fuel consumption, and at all those
military bases around the world, and the US Navy at sea, etc etc etc.

Sure the industrial base eats fuel, but follow the money: DoD procurement
is maybe $50 billion a year TOPS. Consumer consumption, even admitting
imports, is about two orders of magnitude higher. Assuming that energy
use is a reasonably constant proportion of production dollars, consumer
production still consumes far more energy than military. And as far as
bases/warships go, the previous argument still holds: 200,000,000 people
drive almost every day in the Excited Snakes. Beside that a few hundred
warships are (ahem) a drop in the bucket.


BTW, even at worst case figures of ten per household, permanently
powered, it's unlikely that wall wart wastage exceeds 0.0005% of total
US fuel consumption.

I'd drop a few of those zeros, but agree it's less than 1%. Continually-on
appliances (microwave clocks, instant-on TVs, etc) probably take far more.


Cheers,
Francois.