Hi folks,

Considering my gas bill will be high this winter and I don't want my power bill following suit (and because I'm a dirty hippy), I'm looking for good and free/cheap power mgmt software.

what I need is simple but effective software that will suspend/wake on a schedule or, if anything does what this software claims to do (http://www.tucows.com/preview/373426), something to actually shut down and power on on a schedule.

My question about that is, can software power a computer on when it's turned off? I don't see how that's possible, but that's what it claims to do...

Just suspend/wake would be a good start.

I expect that since this is tech talk, this conversation will stay professional and friendly

10/31/2005 10:38:39 AM

you know that there is a button on the front of your computer for shit like this

it is called a power button

you might have heard about it

use it

10/31/2005 10:47:37 AM

ah yes, the expected snarky remark. Congrats on being the first.

i happen to be very forgetful, so I like to keep things automated whenever I can. thanks for the advice, though.

Quote :

"I expect that since this is tech talk, this conversation will stay professional and friendly"

10/31/2005 10:49:53 AM

umm windows
task scheduler + power manager built in

10/31/2005 11:13:17 AM

settings -> control panel -> power options

system standby

pick ammount of time

10/31/2005 11:34:44 AM

i'm not stupid; I'm asking for this software for a specific reason.

these computers run webservers and whatnot on my machine, and I only want them going into hibernate mode during the day (which is what you're suggesting would cause). I only want them doing it at night

also task scheduler is fine for telling it to hibernate, but it doesn't tell it to wake up. I could schedule some random task to wake up the machine and run, but that seems sort of silly.

my main question is about being able to schedule the machine to actually power off then power back on. I just don't see how that can actually be done, but that one piece of software says it does it

[Edited on October 31, 2005 at 12:28 PM. Reason : .]

10/31/2005 12:06:54 PM

snarky?

thats a first

10/31/2005 12:59:11 PM

the only way your computer will boot after its been powered off (not in standby) is via the motherboard.

This includes: Wake on Lan, bios scheduled booting, and the powerbutton.

If your motherboard supports scheduled shutdown and booting this is probably the best option

otherwise go with task scheduler running a wakeup from standby task. Its not really a silly way to do it. Whats silly is turning off a computer that runs a webserver ;-)

and why download some program when the functionality is already built in

10/31/2005 1:29:48 PM

you can buy a startup/shutdown controller that you could hook up to a timer - it's how people turn on PCs when their car starts/turns off - there must be a way to simulate that voltage

10/31/2005 1:31:22 PM

if you could make the timer complete the circuit on the power leads like the power button does, that would work. Probably wouldn't be hard to do at all if you wanted a hardware based solution.

10/31/2005 1:34:23 PM

^^ both good ideas.

Quote :

"Its not really a silly way to do it. Whats silly is turning off a computer that runs a webserver ;-)"

i only run the server for my own uses - to get files that I need, etc. In the middle of the night, I won't need it

10/31/2005 2:12:59 PM

actually this might be of interest.

The directions are for a linksys router, but the concept is pretty generic. Basically you forward port 9 UDP from the internet to xxx.xxx.xxx.255 on your internal network (where the first 3 groups are your internal network i.e. 192.168.1.255)

Then enable wake on lan on the desired computer.

So whenever you need to access anything you send a Wake on Lan packet to your external ip address from whatever remote computer. This wakes your computer and you can get files.

If you set windows to auto standby this would save more power since you only actually have the computer on when you need the files.

The only catch here is 1) you need to know your external ip (which you'd also need if you're getting files etc.. so its moot) and 2) i dunno if wake on lan wakes your comp up from standby.

edit: you'd also need to know the MAC address of the computer you want to wake.

But since MAC addresses are static you could just write it down/commit it to memory

[Edited on October 31, 2005 at 2:54 PM. Reason : more info]

10/31/2005 2:49:48 PM