We Found the Hidden Cost of Data Centers. It's in Your Electric Bill [video]

This is a tangent, but one untapped source of energy savings that seems to be invisible to climate activists is Microsoft Windows' constant drain on resources relative to Linux and MacOS. It's shocking how energy inefficient Windows is even when it's doing absolutely nothing noticable for a user.

You are being funny, considering what a shit-show is Linux laptop power management.

I can pretty much guarantee you that the typical Windows desktop machine uses much less energy than the typical Linux desktop machine of similar capabilities. Linux power saving basically never works out of the box unless the user has carefully selected the platform to avoid the Linux kernel's numerous defects. By contrast every computer that comes with Windows has working energy-saving features from the factory because that's how Dell and HP get those Energy Star ratings.

Way to bring up Linux power management into an unrelated discussion x_x

The average windows box is full of so much bloatware, it likely evens out.

Because it is the exact opposite? Power management and drivers are a shitshow on Linux. When I want my Lenovo (RIP IBM) Thinkpad to last more than 2 hours, I have to boot Windows.

But is is no question: the Apple Silicon chips sip power. If you're looking to minimize watts consumed, a MacBook Air is still on top (or bottom), even if OS X has many pain points too.

I wholeheartedly agree. Software bloat is a hidden energy drain on corporate America as well as the general public no different than how landlords only leech rents from firms and individuals while providing nothing of value. There is no need to politicize by yelling at climate activists though.

It's true. There are more Windows desktops used in enterprise environments and households than linux and there are so many insane design choices like making the taskbar clock slider thing be written in react. How many useless clocks does that waste? That is a very easy optimization that can be remediated instead of being lazy and waiting for the next node from Intel or AMD.

This seems unlikely to me. Most of these machines are laptops nowadays. While my Linux system idles at 4W, the plug is only capable of going up to 60W. So even if Windows brought it to the point of nearly overheating the power brick (I’m no Windows fan, but I’m pretty skeptical there!), it would only be 1/10’th of a typical 600W window air conditioner.

The untapped energy savings is, IMO, getting people to run their climate control less. We should toughen up a bit, tell our brains that 50F-80F is the comfortable range. (Depending on humidity and your workload).

For any individual the difference is not noticeable. But across the several hundred million laptops in the US even 1 watt adds up.

I compared to air conditioners though, which would also be multiplied by that several hundred million factor (well, maybe the laptops get an additional factor of, like, 4 because a room can fit multiple people with laptops, and you don’t need an air conditioner in every season).

If we’re looking at choices a person can make, every choice is multiplied by millions when applied to the entire population of a country, so the 1W differences are swamped by the equally scaled 10W differences.

As a desktop and laptop Linux user for many years, I wholeheartedly agree.

Every watt into laptops means a watt the air conditioner needs to move out.

you cannot ignore small things in the grand scheme as they add up.

It doesn’t make sense to talk about “adding up” unless we define what we’re aggregating over. Residential energy consumption, for sure, is a significant chunk of energy consumption.

If we’re looking at the things we can do to reduce our individual consumption, it absolutely makes sense to prioritize the things which are large relative to our other individual contributions, first.

Computers use up extremely small amounts of electricity. Most people don't actually know this. Your washing machine is a good ~100 computers. A lightbulb? If it's not LED, that's a few computers. For one lightbulb.

Of course it depends on the computer, but if we're talking laptops or corpo computers it's like 25 - 50 watts. Supercomputers, like those used for AI, are different of course.

Fine, but I have already upgraded to the most efficient heat pump, and so I'm at the end of where I can go there. Likewise my insulation cannot be improved without a major remodel (My house is not built to modern standards so there is a lot of improvement, but those require thicker walls and a higher attic ceiling) and so while I'd like to do them they are not possible. What is left is the smaller things.