Illuminating

I recently bought a Watt's Up? power meter and plugged my computer station into it.  Looking at the readout, it consumes about 110 Watts.

Wow, I thought, that seems like a lot.  Because, you know, it's over 100.  In some scales that could boil water.

Then one evening I turned on my little desk lamp and glanced at the power meter.  It read 150 Watts.  Wow again.  That seems like almost 50% more (though it's closer to 1/3)!

So I look, and the little lamp only has a 40 Watt bulb in it (at least that part of the math works out).

That seems ... disproportionate.

With 110 Watts, I can power a computer with its associated CPU, Hard Disks, Graphics Card, etc, a pair of speakers with a powered subwoofer, a 22" LCD, a cable modem, a wireless router, a keyboard and optical mouse, and recharge the battery in my UPS.  Using these I can talk to almost anyone in the world virtually instantaneously, watch movies, play music, learn about the world, and almost anything else intangible.

With 40 Watts, I can illuminate a small corner of my bedroom.


My bathroom lighting fixture has three bulbs: a 100 Watt and two 75s.  250 Watts to illuminate the smallest room in the house.  I could put a computer with 6 22" LCDs there instead, saving power and upgrading the lighting to a giant virtual seizure-inducing disco ball or psychedelic Lava^® lamp wall.

Or I could save all that energy and just comb my hair in the dark.