I turn all my electronics off at night! I have a sequence of turn on and turn off.
I've been wanting a sequential power system where I could push one button.
Everything off in sequence and everything on in sequence.
Unfortunately those system are very expensive to buy off the shelf.
I've been toying with the idea of using solid state relays to sequentially switch on a series of standard power strips.

If you have a lot of vintage gear or a large format console, I could see leaving it on. It would avoid the stress of thermal expansion as the gear warms up each time. However, if most of your equipment is fairly new, I would go ahead and power down at the end of each day. A lot of newer gear either can handle the power cycling better. and/or have switching power supplies that wear out faster when they are on constantly.

I turn everything off. Not only for safing energy costs, but also to protect the equipment in case of thunderstorms. None of my stuff does need an extensive warm-up phase. I don't do such critical jobs in the mornings that they could suffer from not yet warmed up gear.
This is more then I can say from myself when I come in during wintertime... I appreciate a hot cup of coffee in the mornings and want to work in an well tempered environment, too. Not only the work could suffer from my cold start... People do as well, occasionally.
A different thing is the HiEnd stereo gear back home.. My pre-amp doesn't even have a power switch...But my wife loves to pull the plug on it, 'cause I have rarely time to enjoy a listening session when coming home...
And some quiet can be so soothing, too...
;-)

I shut down all my audio gear every night. No vintage gear here.
The computer stays on 24/7 unless the forecast is thunderstorms or high wind.

Jeff

djmukilteo, post: 347629 wrote: I turn all my electronics off at night! I have a sequence of turn on and turn off.
I've been wanting a sequential power system where I could push one button.
Everything off in sequence and everything on in sequence.

Same here.

I power down AND unplug all of my power conditioners. Florida is the "lightning strike capital" of the earth (per NOAA). Summers are real bitch here with heat-driven t-storms.

I have always turned off my gear at night:
1. To save on the power bill.
2. To save wear and tear on my gear. I don't know how much wear happens when leaving solid state gear on but I turn it off all the same.

My gear spends most of it's time OFF. Weekend warrior. Plus most of my gear is battery powered. Works the same no matter where I am that week. I prefer the battery powered stuff. No cords to lug / trip over. And out of danger indoors with Tstorms.

I leave the laptop ON all the time. The TV is on most of the time for the pets and so I don't stub my toe going for a late night drink / snack.

When working at TV & radio stations, equipment never gets powered down, except in cases of maintenance. The multi-fold reason for this, is so that everything is ready to go on a moment's notice. The second reason was that turning equipment on & off can cause power surges within. These on/off surges can overtime do more damage then leaving the equipment on 24/7.

However, in light of our current need to reduce our " Green Footprint", it makes sense to power down anything that you will not be using for an extended period of time. There is also the added security of a better safety buffer in preventing electrical fires. It can happen. It happens.

Some power distribution systems (which ain't cheap) have a nice sequenced ramp up turn on procedure. My remote truck is only powered up when I am working in it. Although my Neve console was never turned off, for the over 20 years it was in service at NBC-TV except for minor maintenance on occasion.

I believe in turning off equipment when not in use however, so many pieces of equipment including our LCD TVs are literally always on even when they are off. Now just what screwball thought up this great idea? Wall warts, another power sucker that's generally not turned off. And you fools who leave your computers on 24/7 are wasting a whole lot of energy. Unless your computer is an integral part of the operation of your locations climate control systems, burglar alarms, surveillance cameras, etc., you're just wasting power. And although disk drives are frequently rated at something like 150,000 hours mean time between failures, then why should I have more than 17 dead hard drives that are only a couple of years old? There is no truth in advertising. Turn things off when you're not using them. Turn off lights. Turn off your girlfriend. Turn off your car and do not attempt to die from carbon monoxide poisoning. Not smart. If you don't like this post? And it turns you off? I guess I did my job.

Turn off. Disengage. Throw up.
Mx. Remy Ann David

If I don't use energy then how is Enron going to stay in business? Oh wait, never mind...

Hard drives are mechanical devices, they wear out. i.e. moving parts get smaller, and they're pretty small to start with. Less of an issue with SSD tech here now. But even that has it's woes.

I'll agree on the walwart thing. They're always on. My headphone preamp is one of those. The only way to turn it off is to unplug it or flip the switch on the power strip which has lights that are always on. Fortunately most of those types are low amps and draw little more than a 60W lightbulb. But it adds up x20 devices.

As far as green and conservation. Does that really work well as a business model with our current economic woes? It'd be more green to have your power drawn from wind or solar IMO. Than to stop using power altogether. But then again these things generate heat and there's that global warming issue. I leave my computer on as a time management thing. Limited bandwidth for the internet and I have things I need to acquire. Less of an issue now that I'm on quasi-broadband. But on dialup, it takes a dedicated month to download 10G's of stuff. Which is like 1/3rd the download for a decent linux distrobution. That might not otherwise ever see the internet. And might otherwise update every six months.

It's really a shame there aren't more inexpensive control devices available to sequentially turn on and turn off devices in our home and businesses. The idea of having a common location to fire up all my electrical/electronics devices within my workspace or at home has been something that continues to surface in my mind and begs for a solution..
The energy savings and reduction of green house gases that could be realized if we all did something about this would be astounding. We live in a world today where leaving everything plugged in and operating even at quiescent idle currents is the norm. All this equipment could be so easily removed off the grid and potentially save millions and millions of dollars...a huge paradigm shift in our attitudes towards our electrical usage is in order.
What I would love to see is a solid state system with zero crossover switching that would intelligently turn everything on or off with the touch of a button without surges, pops, clicks, crackles, bumps, thumps or any other erroneous events!

Said the person with all cordless phones... (j/k)

Just a thought, but you can accomplish your goal with power strips. Daisey chain them and plug things in in the sequence you need. Run down the switches in order. Current tech and not that costly. Unfortunately requires proximity and/or a ton of extra cabling. I did see some TV content about a green button for houses to tame those warts. But really should we be attacking it by use alone? Clearly the generation of power is the non-green element of concern. But how non-green is it if you're running off the grid to begin with via solar + wind + hydro + geothermal + ??? Or are we at a state of concern that farmers shouldn't water their fields, families shouldn't have gardens or pools, and your .gov only lets you draw power for 10 or less hours a day? I don't think we're quite there yet.

Although when I was in the Army Band, they'd shutdown the entire grid for several hours on sundays until the post was back on budget. Normally 2 to 6 hours.

One thing I have done that works well is that I have all of my power strips plugged into a master power switch that is mounted on my desk, next to my console. This way, when I power down my equipment, none of the wall warts can draw any power or generate any heat at all. I have a second switch mounted aside the equipment switch that controls all of my computer related equipment: computer, printers, scanner, hard drives.

Jeff

It always boils down to trade offs
There are sequential power strips that you can buy for $100 on up. Monster has a unit that costs $200 with filters and surge and monitoring but that just seems like a lot of $$$ to do the job...
I suppose pushing 8 power buttons on and off manually in sequence does the job cheap, takes a little extra time and the saved $200 could be spent on the electric bill?? LOL

dj is right in that it's all about $$

power down = less electricity, (maybe) less wear on the gear, etc

That money adds up over time.

Money is green. If it can save me money, it's green to me.
This is why so many businesses are "going green" now.
Not just to appeal to customers, but b/c some of these measures can actually save money.
Double bonus.

Excluding the above, I'm with Mr. Shadow.

When building the studio I had the foresight to run all power lines from a separate mains circuit with one master switch for the whole studio area. Also we have a 19" switch panel to control the mains to the aktive speakers ( 5.1 ), power amps and a number of devices that are not necessarily needed when doing non audio work. This is inexpensive and fast to control.

For me, it was also important to keep an eye on heat dissipation inside racks, etc. Heat build-up is severely shorten the life expectancy of electronic devices. Every 10 degrees more can cost you ~half a year.
A good idea would also be to check if your mains is polluted with high frequency irradiation, etc.
A mains filter is often improving the sound, too!

An article about on/off:
http://www.resolutionmag.com/pdfs/DRAGONS/ONOROFF.PDF

soapfloats, post: 347783 wrote: This is why so many businesses are "going green" now.

Unfortunately going green means opened fewer hours, running the A/C less, stacking trucks to the point of being unsafe. While also cutting jobs in the name of green. But enough of the big picture for now.

I'm all for protecting your gear. But I'd rather have gear that doesn't "need" protecting. I just upgraded my laptops HDD from 160GB to 320GB and this new drive is running a bit hotter than the previous one. And was a bit damaged fresh out of the box / from the factory. A couple of the PATA pins were bent. In terms of trust of my critical data, I trust the OLD one better for now. Even though it's OLD and well used at this point. But I need the extra capacity, so off I go... If we could just get past our disposable tech tends. Cell phones, laptops, pocket gadgets of all sorts, all trendy and obsolete in six months or less.

As far as laptop HDD, most optical drives can be replaced with a hard drive enclosure. That still isn't a good option for recording on most laptops since the optical bay bridge connector is usually not SATA even if the drive you slide in there is. Never the less, that would allow more hard drive space without worrying about your new drive as much.

Speaking of hard disk drives, you know they have a maximum number of turns and then they fail, so it is very important to turn them off. You don't have to turn off your computer just put it to sleep. That what I do, I turn off all my outboard equipment and I put my computer to sleep when I'm finished.

TheJackAttack, post: 347840 wrote: As far as laptop HDD, most optical drives can be replaced with a hard drive enclosure. That still isn't a good option for recording on most laptops since the optical bay bridge connector is usually not SATA even if the drive you slide in there is. Never the less, that would allow more hard drive space without worrying about your new drive as much.

In my case it's the actual HDD, as in magnetic drive, not optical. I do have several TB of 3.5" drives via a docking station (it's such a cheap option these days). For < $500 I can have more TB's of storage than my last employer had for the entire company (1000+ employees / circa 2002).

I'm doing HD video editing with external audio and a lot of times my projects exceed 100GB in source + work files, so the 160GB drive that was in there just wasn't cutting it. Which was an upgrade from the original 60GB drive. Factor in an 8GB DVD destination, and the 8GB of source media (after editing) + 8GB of generated DVD + 8GB of DVD image file to speed up the burn(s), and that's already 24GB of data (original + work + result). Not including the raw unedited HD source material (15GB per hour) or DSD audio (5GB per hour). And we're just talking one camera and two channels of audio (glorified camcorder). The laptop in question is also limited to PATA drives. I'm due for an upgrade, but $100 for an HDD versus $600 for a new laptop, is a bit more in budget for now.

You misunderstood me. You take the CD Rom drive out of the laptop and replace it with a hard drive enclosure.

[[url=http://[/URL]="http://newmodeus.co…"]Optical Bay HDD : NewmodeUS, Hard Drive Caddys for Notebooks[/]="http://newmodeus.co…"]Optical Bay HDD : NewmodeUS, Hard Drive Caddys for Notebooks[/]

TheJackAttack, post: 347868 wrote: You misunderstood me. You take the CD Rom drive out of the laptop and replace it with a hard drive enclosure.

[[url=http://[/URL]="http://newmodeus.co…"]Optical Bay HDD : NewmodeUS, Hard Drive Caddys for Notebooks[/]="http://newmodeus.co…"]Optical Bay HDD : NewmodeUS, Hard Drive Caddys for Notebooks[/]

That is an interesting option. My laptop is circa 2006 and has a screw to mount that drive in place. So not my first choice. Although pata is likely better than a USB 2.0 docking station in performance. Plus I doubt that I'd be able pick one of those up off the shelf. And I'm not really that fond of removing the 30 or so screws to get to that one screw. Swapping the HDD only involves 6 screws, 2 on the face plate, 4 on the drive.

Should only be one screw to remove from the bottom unless that single screw is under the keyboard. Some keyboards come out by springing a couple of clips. Some need two screws removed from the bottom first. Some do require removing the palm cover. On my Dells it was a bottom screw which I didn't even bother to reuse.

Mine requires removing the entire bottom cover. Which also requires removing the faceplate and keyboard to remove a couple of screws that also hold the bottom cover in place. Last time I accessed that area I had 4+ screws left over when all was said and done. But I left it in pieces for six months too. Eventually gave up on getting a replacement fan and just cleaned the old one up as good as I could. I guess I'm a bit of a tech packrat. Re-looking at the bottom, there is an access panel above the wifi card and RAM, that probably gives access to that screw. Which might only mean three screws, but still an extra $50 for the enclosure and you'll still need a second pata drive to use it(which I have, but if I didn't it'd cost more than just replacing the current HDD). I like having my optical drive since I run linux and it's a life saver when you start playing around too much. If I was going to upgrade that, it'd be to another optical drive with more modern abilities. The current one only reads dvds and burns cds.

As far as green, the optical drive gets used less and therefor uses less power. I tend to use the laptop most since the other devices (desktops) are quite hungry power consumers. And heat generators in my otherwise well insulated room. Outside of a few extras, 4 channel full duplex soundcard, HDMI out, display options with better size and color reproduction and other supplemental needs I could probably live without a desktop. But that higher quality audio is a hard one to reproduce on a laptop without firewire and minimal expansion ports.