been folding quite a while now - I used to have 3 desktop pcs and 2 laptops which were on pretty much 24/7... and my electric bill is humungous since I started folding!

So... hard decision time, but I think I'm gonna have to stop. Just can't justify the cost of the electric.... might leave one pc with the client on, but that's it - it won't be on 24/7 either...

Ah well, at least I know I've done a bit to promote the cause....

I know how you feel. I had to stop - just couldn't afford it.

I have one machine at home folding 24/7 and another that is on maybe a couple of hours a day. I've noticed a sizable increase in electricity consumption over the year I've been folding, so I've decided to stop folding on the 24/7 machine and see what happens with the next bill (I cba checking the meter myself )

I too noticed a rather large jump in my electric bill so I scaled mine back a fair bit :(

I know only occasionally have folding running on the fastest machine I have.

I only have one machine folding, but its on 24/7. I find it a pain to keep switching it off and on, plus I sometimes need to access it remotely, so I don't want to turn it off.

So assuming its on all the time anyway, will the electricity consumption be much less if its sat there doing nothing, compared with when its folding?

The monitor gets turned off in either case.

yes it will depend on what a computers doing as to how much electricity it uses as doing harder and more complex calculations will create more heat in a system so it must be using more electricity as the heat is only energy being dissapated from other sources.

I checked the meter this morning

All the lights off in the house and only a couple of tv's on standby and when I turned the pc on it did spin a little faster.

I was reading somewhere on the net which said if you leave the average pc on 24/7 your electric bill will be £70 a year more expensive!

On old CPU's they used to use only a tiny bit more at full bore than doing nothing, however newer CPU's (last year or two) can shut themselves into a lower power mode doing nothing.

This makes a huge difference to power use.