I was just thinking, maybe the boot time of the Zonbu doesn’t matter all that much.
I am about to head out to do some shopping and I was going to shut my Zonbu down, then it occurred to me, since it is only sipping 9W, I could just leave it on…
Am I selfish?
I’ll turn the monitor off (that’s good for 25w-35w of savings), but why turn the box off at all?
That question might offend the very green among you, but my time has value too and I think using the Zonbu buys me a little flexibility in this regard.
My desktop PC sucks up 6W of power just in standby, so leaving the Zonbu running at 9W instead may just be a viable option. Sure, it will cost me a bit of my overall Zonbu power-savings, but don’t you think I’m worth it?
To be honest, my main concern is that the power here can be unstable, and if the power goes out I have some concern it might bork the operating system. Which raises an interesting point in itself… just how long can a Zonbu and an LCD panel run off a typical home UPS?
In fact, because I care so much about providing you with good info, I’ll simulate some power outages and see what breaks.
Something for later this weekend.
Green is going main-stream
Now that America and the world are waking up to the idea of green living, and green computing, I think we’re going to see an interesting “green middle class” emerge.
People who care about the environment, but balance their green efforts with economic and time realities of everyday life.
People like me, who appreciate the benefits of green efforts, but also use them to enhance my lifestyle in ways beyond just saving resources.
I think we’ll see a lot more of this conceptual horse-trading when it comes to how the “savings” that are achieved with green devices and green living are “spent” in society.
What do you think?
-Mr. Zonbu
Real life with the Zonbu Mini-PC 
“Now that America and the world are waking up to the idea of green living, and green computing, I think we’re going to see an interesting “green middle class” emerge.”
Completely agree. I also think we’re going to see mini-itx and even nano-itx form factor devices become more mainstream pretty soon. That’s why I registered the name smallandgreen.com. I think there will be many more devices like Zonbu going after the consumer market in short order.
Right right – I reported about a very similar device (without the external net storage tho) some time ago on
http://wolfgang.lonien.de/?p=314
I think that one consumes some 6W only, if your storage is on USB. Can be pretty much neglected compared to a big fat nice monitor, like you wrote.
Kind regards,
Wolfgang
http://wolfgang.lonien.de/
http://blog.thedebianuser.org/
It’s not as bad to not turn off this computer as not turning of a PS3 or not turning of a PC. However – it’s still very good to turn it off.
I read somewhere that the transition from analog to digital television here in Sweden will result in ridiculously much more energy consumption just because many digital boxes can’t be turned off in the same way that my internetmodem and router can’t be turned of or my ac adapter can’t be turned off without assistance from another appliance.
Byt yeah – you are correct – one has to choose what gives most value and right now having a low ecological footprint is very valuable but other things are valuable to. I would however say to you that you should turn it off over night. I try to do that myself with my modem and router even though they have to be turned on and reinitialized every morning. From that I save 12 W every hour I sleep.
What I wonder is about Zonbu is: Can’t you ut your computer into standby? When I measured my flatscreen it took 1 W in standby and if you put your computer into stand by the screen will go into stand by automatically making it the possibly easiest way to save power. My laptop only uses 4-6 W when in stand by and it wakes up in only a couple of seconds and your Zonbu can’t possibly use any more power than that, screen included, when in stand by.
My thoughts exactly, isn’t there a standby feature on the Zonbu?
[…] I talked before about instant-on strategies for the Zonbu, and basically concluded there isn’t really a compelling reason to turn it off, except perhaps over night. Other than that, it uses so little power you can just shut off the monitor and speakers and leave it running. […]