Pro Tools, Energy Saver, and power consumption

[Mark Dann]

Armed with my new handy watt meter, I have been running around my house and studio tracking down the "energy vampires". Energy vampires are those items that drive up your electric bill in ways that surprise you. Like my water cooler. Lo and behold, one of them is Pro Tools itself. Because PT doesn't support sleep, we Mac users can't use Apple's sleep function. But few of us are aware of what that price it. Courtesy of my watt meter, I can now supply you with that info:

Intel iMac, on but idle: 70 to 80 watts (more if you are actually doing something that torcs up the hard drive and/or cpu.
The same iMac in sleep mode: 3 watts.

Mac Pro (2009 8-core), same as above: 160 watts vs. 10 watts.

A 192 interface is 57 watts, btw. This stuff adds up fast.

I would like to petition Digidesign to keep all this in mind when it comes to future updates, in both the hardware and software camps. If the current hardware won't allow it, at least try build some energy consciousness into the next round. All hardware (audio, computer, and otherwise) will last a lot longer when not power-cycling more than it needs to. Plus there is a need for all of us to stop wasting power like we have for the past bunch of decades.

Is this issue important to anyone else?