Which Mac is your thirstiest when it comes to electricity, and does the Mac's thirst for electricity influence how you use it?

For me, it would have to be a dual 1 GHz G4 Digital Audio. Although the PSU on my 9600 can put out more Watts, it's not nearly as maxed out as the DA. The DA definitely uses more power. So much so, in fact, that I have it on a strict diet.

I would like to leave it running 24x7, but the reality is that it doesn't get used as much as my slow 500 MHz Pismo because it is tethered to the wall by it's power cord (plus, it's a little heavy to sit on my lap). So I've got Energy Saver shutting it down at night and not turning it on again until the afternoon when I'm more likely to be home from work.

What about you? Do you have concerns about the electricity consumed by a Mac of yours, and if so, how do you deal with it?

Peace,
Drew
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Power to the PowerPC!

I don't rally have a clue how much power any of my computers use, nor how to find out. I don't pay the electricity bill at home anyway! I don't leave computers running all the time though as that just causes unnecessary wear on them, and also my Acer in particular is very noisy and heats up quite a lot if you leave it running - I put them in standby mode or shut them down if I don't need to use them for a while. Presumably my G3 uses the most power of any of my Macs, given that it's the only tower and has lots of drives in it.
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Main system: custom C2D 2.66GHz tower/4GB RAM/2600XT 512 MB/500GB HD/XP Pro x86+Vista Business x64
Main Mac: Beige G3 minitower (Sonnet G4 500MHz/640 MB DVD/USB/Radeon 32 MB/OS 9.2.2+10.4.11)

my most power hungry mac would have to be my B&W. should, like a fool, I leave it on 24/7, usually logging IRC or crunching away at bittorrent.

the thing that takes more power than the computer, is the giant dell ES-17 17" CRT. it's frickin huge for a 17". But no worries, I am getting a slim and sexy LCD in a day or too. But the odd thing is the B&W's power supply has no problem driving that huge thing. I have one of those special power cords that hooks in to the power supply of the computer, so it powers it, and I am not taking another wall plug.

-digital

i think it´s my g4 MDD with dual 1.25, max RAM, 700G storage, radeon 9800 graphics, pci usb2 card, m-audio revolution 7.1 soundcard.

Without having used a watt-hour meter to determine it, I suspect also that a 9600 is streets ahead of the rest of my flock. My 9600/400MHz/45GB (in four drives), with four PCI cards active, an Agfa e50 USB scanner, a LaCie FireWire CD-R/RW burner, and an attached (even if it is only pass-through mains power) 17" CRT Studio Display, must win hands-down. No wonder that the 9600 is heavy, given that sort of a diet, nor that the 512Ke is so slight on its miserable 60-W allowance.

When I get the Quadra 950 going properly, it may not be far behind the 9600.

de
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(60x) 13DT + 3PB + PTPro; (G3) 7DT/MT; (G4) 3T + PB. System 8.1 to OS 10.5.8

THe most power-hungry Mac that I've ever owned is my current Mac, the iMac G5 rev. B at 2 GHz.

the Mac I currently have that uses the most power is probably the iMac, which I leave on 24/7, because it doesn't take too much energy. I have its display set to sleep and its hard discs set to spin down when I'm not around.

of course, the powermac G3 (b/w) is pretty power hungry I'd guess.

Oh, but not much beats the SGI Octane. The lights flicker when I plug that one in! It has a 747 watt power supply! More than NAU suggested everything in a whole dorm room should use. (Luckily I didn't have the Octane at NAU. )
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[Insert Cool Signature here!]

In this vein, you may enjoy this page: http://www.ppcmla.com/press/

Feel free to comment...

Peace,
Drew
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Power to the PowerPC!

While not strickly a 'Mac', my Apple Network Server 500/200 with two DEC Storageworks RAID arrays connected was the most power hungry machine. In fact I had to retire it because of what it was costing to run!

Unfortunately, I chose to replace it with a G4 Xserve with an internal RAID arrangement (nothing too fancy), and recently calculated that it consumes around 10% of my house power bill (compared to my Cube which seems to take about 1%).

Kind regards,

Macdownunder

i pretty much leave all of my desktop machines off until i want to use them. my MBP gets more use than any of the others combined, and i sleep it at night, so for 90% of the time no computer is on in my room.

but if i had to choose my most power-hungry system, that would probably have to be my main gaming rig. its not mega-powerful by today's standards, but it will hold its own. the PSU in it is 650 watts and it probably uses 400-500 of those watts. ish.

My G4/500Mhz. Especially now that I have Ubuntu on it. That fan makes the loudest noise. It sounds like a hairdryer.

My most power hungry is my 4400.