we had a high electricity bill and my dad thinks my laptop is to blame? could h be right, do laptops use much electricity or do pc's use more? wud it be worth unplugging completely when not using?
What uses more electricity a laptop or a 14inch tv?knicks
Most products will have the power consumption detailed somewhere on the model label.
I'd expect a 14" TV to take somewhere around 30W, possibly up to 60W. For example, my 14" Sony Trinitron CRT TV takes 47W.
I doubt your laptop uses more than a 14" TV, but I bet a desktop PC (with a fast processor and a couple of hard drives inside it) will use the same or more than a 14" TV.
So, my educated guess, in order of lowest consumption first:
laptop
14" TV (assuming its CRT and not LCD)
large / fast desktop PC
You can buy power meters than connect inline with the appliance you want to measure, and get the exact figure in Watts of how much power it's actually consuming.
http://www.reuk.co.uk/Kill-a-Watt.htm
This sort of device would give you exactly the answer you need.
What uses more electricity a laptop or a 14inch tv?sports ,nba teams
Both maybe close (30 to 70watts) but to check read the Wattage off the back of both. Your house meter(bill) is in Watts
If the Wattage is not listed use formula: Wattage=Volts *Amperage
Note: Amperage may read as mA which is milliAmp so if the adapter to the laptop reads as 500mA it equals .5A
if its 500mA then the unit roughly uses 60w=120v*.5A
a 14inch TV should use less power then a 60watt light bulb so if maybe get your dad to install differant light bulbs and turn out light when leaving a room.
Some laptops can be beasts though and if its close to a desktop you could be looking at a few hundred watts
The TV probably does. The laptop is designed to operate on batteries, so it optimizes its use of electricity as much as possible.
Try this - look at your electric meter. If the wheel on it is spinning fairly rapidly, you can figure out what circuit is using the most power. Have someone at the breaker panel turn off one circuit at a time until the wheel suddenly slows down. Odds are, that circuit had the heaviest load on it. Now figure out what loads are on that circuit. What room suddenly lost lights? Did the furnace or water pump suddenly quit? Did an electric heater shut off? That's your clue.
And electric heaters are some of the worst offenders, by the way. This includes water heaters and electric stoves, ranges, etc.
PS: Make sure you turn off all computers before you do this. They really don't like losing power unexpectedly like this!
PCs use more power than laptops, laptops are generally low power usage devices when unplugged, but when plugged in can consume as much as a desktop, but rarely more. Anything that is plugged into an outlet can use power, even if the device does not seem to be on. When you're not using the laptop, you can hibernate it and unplug it to reduce power consumption.
Your laptop uses about the same as a 60 to 100 watt light bulb when switched on.
When not switched on but the power supply plugged in it only uses a fraction of that.
If you were on it all day say 8 hours it would use less than one unit ot electricity say about 10 pence (UK)
So I don't think it is you running up the bill.
