(photo by johnwilson1969)

Last week I was thinking of using my Thinkpad as a file server and I started wondering how much power it would use if I left it on all day. Laurence said he had device for measure power consumption called a Kill A Watt.

After getting one and measuring the Thinkpad in a variety of conditions, I started wondering what devices in my home were poorly behaved with their power consumption. I went around measuring all the devices I could find for a couple hours.

One of the biggest surprises is that my Comcast digital cable receiver/DVR uses a whopping 42 Watts even when it’s turned off. That’s more than 3 times what my Thinkpad uses when set to save power. Another surprise was my Sony shelf stereo (circa 1999) which uses 9 Watts when it’s turned off and is just showing the time. As a result, I’ve hooked these poorly behaving devices up to a power strip that gets turned off unless I’m at home.

It turns out my Thinkpad only consumes 14 Watts when set to save power and with the screen turned off. All of my results for a variety of devices and chargers are now here on this Power Consumption Page. Feel free to measure your own devices and add to the page. I also measured a number of phone chargers, and contrary to the warnings in the video below, I wasn’t able to find one that drew any power when left plugged in.