[Wylug-discuss] A New Year present?

[John Hodrien]

On Mon, 10 Jan 2011, A J Cole wrote:

> Thought this "review" might be of interest.
>
> 	My best computer upgrade, evah
> 	http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/09/my-best-computer-upgrade-evah/
>
> [For those who don't already know the focus of "Watts Up With That?" is
> "Climate Science".]
>
> Andrew
>
> btw He didn't mention battery life - should be another plus.

I am without a hint of a green hat on here...

Yes, although in a desktop I think the advantages are possibly on the high
end.  His old disk he claims uses 29 Watts more than the SSD.  That's a mighty
fierce hard disk he's got there.  A current Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 is
listed as 11.6W average, so you'd be looking at more like 6W saved not 29W.
I've got a 320Gbyte AV drive in my PC that's rated at ~3W, although that'd
push the performance advantage even further towards the SSD.

A hypothetical alternative for the desktop again without being green:

Performance-wise (in terms of normal usage patterns), I wonder how it'd
compare with spending the same amount of money on RAM and power.  So add
another 8Gb to your RAM (leaving you a reasonable amount of money left to
cover the leccy bill), and leave your machine in standby rather than *ever*
shutting it down.  You end up with more storage, more RAM, and it'll only cost
you about 5 quid a year in standy electricity usage.  Obviously depends how
much RAM you have already.  As will all these things, it'll also depend on how
you use your machine.

jh