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PC can't be shipped to CA, CO, HI, OR, VT or WA due to power consumption

dell.com

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Re: PC can't be shipped to CA, CO, HI, OR, VT or WA due to power consumption

#251

Post by techrat »

abz10 wrote: post #169
techrat wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a user misconfiguration issue to me. I've never had an issue keeping a device from going to sleep when it's... actively doing something... like running services.

It occurred in both Windows and Ubuntu. In Windows “Never” wasn’t an option for Sleep (edit; I forget if it wasn’t an option or selecting it didn’t work), in Ubuntu the usual disable sleep commands didn’t work. Someone in the Ubuntu forums suggested there was a recent power management change due to EU reg and the code around it was freshly buggy. I spent a day on it before cutting my losses.

It's software that triggers the sleep state, not the hardware.

Sounds more or less like you were using the desktop OS version for a server device.

Re: PC can't be shipped to CA, CO, HI, OR, VT or WA due to power consumption

#252

Post by ineedasername »

josephcsible wrote: post #246
blooalien wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ummm… Humans "dealt with disease" before "modern medicine" frequently by dying .

Yes, that's my point. Technology can save a lot of lives, even though living without it didn't kill enough humans to drive us to extinction.

Yes, the argument from "But this is how natural humans used to live!" Has spawned any number of misaprehemsions, not to mention a few fad diets.

By all means, embrace food as eaten by out ancestors, if that's what someone really wants, but they should understand that such diets resulted in malnutrition and stunted growth, and we're "embraced" by our ancestors living on the brink of starvation & lack of choice.

Re: PC can't be shipped to CA, CO, HI, OR, VT or WA due to power consumption

#253

Post by throwaway984393 »

jfrunyon wrote: post #221
throwaway984393 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might not be that California has an unfair advantage, but that southern states have an unfair disadvantage. If southern states spike their watt hours due to aircon, we could say the cause is poor construction/architecture. The poorer the insulation (southern homes' insulation is crap compared to northern) the more you need to pump the aircon. And when homes are not designed for optimal environmental efficiency or…

> The poorer the insulation (southern homes' insulation is crap compared to northern) the more you need to pump the aircon. Insulation can only do so much when the outdoor temperature doesn't drop below 80F for weeks at a time.

It doesn't matter how hot it is or for how long, it does its job regardless.

Re: PC can't be shipped to CA, CO, HI, OR, VT or WA due to power consumption

#254

Post by throwaway984393 »

josephcsible wrote: post #183
throwaway984393 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might not be that California has an unfair advantage, but that southern states have an unfair disadvantage. If southern states spike their watt hours due to aircon, we could say the cause is poor construction/architecture. The poorer the insulation (southern homes' insulation is crap compared to northern) the more you need to pump the aircon. And when homes are not designed for optimal environmental efficiency or…

We dealt with disease without modern knowledge of medicine or hygiene for the past 300,000 years too. The fact that lacking something didn't make the human race go extinct doesn't mean it's something we should just give up.

And it doesn't mean we have to keep it, either. It helps to research the particular scenario and find out whether there's a better path than the one we default into.

Re: PC can't be shipped to CA, CO, HI, OR, VT or WA due to power consumption

#255

Post by derefr »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #129
derefr wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The objective is presumably to incentivize increased electrical efficiency in devices, by banning inefficient electrical devices. The goal wouldn't be to decrease consumption; it would be to increase the amount of useful work done while holding consumption constant.

That is semantics. The market of buyers will automatically reward sellers who develop more efficient devices once it starts hitting their wallet. If you want consumption to stay constant, then increase taxes a little. You can keep adjusting it up and down as one’s consumption goal changes.

> The market of buyers will automatically reward sellers who develop more efficient devices once it starts hitting their wallet.

The point is that it's not "hitting their wallet." Idle power draw is an externality — it's negligible per individual (i.e. something people neglect to care about), yet adds up to real money at the municipal level.

And yes, you can make electricity cost more until it's not nelgigible. But you (as a tax-code legislator) don't want to do that. With economic "force-multiplier" utilities like electricity or gasoline, you don't want consumption to stay constant — you actually want it to increase, because consumption of such utilities is in the direct causal chain for GDP growth. Spending energy is necessary-but-not-sufficient to drive your country's economy; disincentivizing your population as a whole from spending energy, is disincentivizing them from driving the economy!

An electricity tax is like a corporate income tax: it indirectly disincentivizes people from making money. Which, as a tax-code legislator, is the last thing you want.

The point of this weird and arcane approach to incentivization that you object to, is to simultaneously incentivize useful electricity consumption, while also disincentivizing useless electricity consumption. To ramp up productivity, by saying "use as much of this as you can — but only in such a way as to drive the economy!"

Re: PC can't be shipped to CA, CO, HI, OR, VT or WA due to power consumption

#256

Post by MrStonedOne »

SahAssar wrote: post #225
busymom0 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is watching a video considered "input"? And are these regulations enforced as default settings and do users have the ability to customize the settings? Or do they want the manufacturers to disable customization too?

It says inactivity, not input. Generally doing thinks like watching video is considered an activity.

it can be taken to mean two things.

the monitor itself has to go to standby if the port it is switched to has no input (as in, the computer is not outputting anything on that port)

and

the computer has to switch the monitor into standby mode on user inactivity.

Re: PC can't be shipped to CA, CO, HI, OR, VT or WA due to power consumption

#257

Post by smsm42 »

wumpus wrote: post #207
smsm42 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure California has yet to ban AMD CPUs and NVIDIA graphics cards, though it would be pretty funny, of course.

My point was that the thing the Dell PC has to do with California is that those 2 chips were designed here.

That, of course, is a valid reason to blame Silicon Valley for Dell choosing the specs for the PC that do not pass California requirements. Not.

Re: PC can't be shipped to CA, CO, HI, OR, VT or WA due to power consumption

#258

Post by wumpus »

smsm42 wrote: post #257
wumpus wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point was that the thing the Dell PC has to do with California is that those 2 chips were designed here.

That, of course, is a valid reason to blame Silicon Valley for Dell choosing the specs for the PC that do not pass California requirements. Not.

I was attempting to educate you, not engage with you assigning blame. I see I made a bad choice.

Re: PC can't be shipped to CA, CO, HI, OR, VT or WA due to power consumption

#259

Post by MetroWind »

gruez wrote: post #150
mritun wrote: post #82

All that the rules say (yes, I read them) is that a workstation with 32G RAM (formula is 10 + 0.03 * RAM_GiB) must not exceed ~ 11W in sleep mode and a desktop with 32G RAM must not exceed 6W in sleep mode (5 + 0.03 * RAM_GiB). Basically, these desktops probably have very ancient/buggy motherboards with broken ACPI. Good riddance. Fun fact: Desktops/workstations shipped without an operating system at purchasers reque…

>All that the rules say (yes, I read them) is that a workstation with 32G RAM (formula is 10 + 0.03 * RAM_GiB) must not exceed ~ 11W in sleep mode and a desktop with 32G RAM must not exceed 6W in sleep mode (5 + 0.03 * RAM_GiB). That's it? The rules only mandate maximum power consumption for sleep mode? Some comments linked to the actual regulations[1], and they seem to contain tables with per-year maximums per devic…

What's the definition of "measured annual energy consumption"?
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