Do you leave PC on 24-7?

[flavius]

Originally Posted by ke6guj

..I'd try calling your local power company and see if they can hook you up.

Good idea.

[Menehune]

Originally Posted by flavius

Does anybody know about a cheap and reliable device to actually measure the impact on the power bill?

Try this:
http://www.p3international.com/produ.../P4400-CE.html
Approx $30us.
I have several and it is interesting to see how much energy plugged in devices use.
There are other monitors like Watts-Up
http://www.professionalequipment.com...qx/default.htm
where you can add in your cost per kilowatt hour and find out how much it costs to run the device.

[Crashless]

Sorry to jump in late, and to not read the whole thread but I have run my Sage server 24/7 for nearly 2 years now and here's what I've found:

Things will fail - plan accordingly.

I've lost a powersupply and CPU so far. I expect to lose a hard drive soon so I've been backing up religiously. It's great and I love it - but PLAN on losing stuff around the one year mark. You will have to replace stuff much faster simply because of the MTBF (mean time between failure) of computing components will eventually come up.

That said - I'm convinced it's the best way to use an HTPC. Treat it like a CE device, it should be that reliable.

Good luck.