Guy Vs. Guy: Shutting Down Your PC at Night: Money Saved or Productivity Lost?

Welcome to Guy Vs. Guy! In this recurring feature, Rick and Dave square off on the business and technology issues of the day. This week's topic: turning PCs off at night. Can a business really save thousands of dollars annually, or does this "green" effort actually cost money?
Dave: Last week, you ran a story about how you can cut your electric bill by powering down PCs at night. My gut reaction? That's nice, in the same way you can save money on gas by keeping your car in neutral while on the highway, or save money at a restaurant by sneaking in your own beverages. Of course, you probably think those are all good ideas, too. But always the realist, I recognize that powering down PCs at night is a pretty stupid idea that costs more money than it could possibly ever save.

Rick: What must it be like in Dave's Bizarro World? Crullers make you thin. Water is dry. Rush Limbaugh is a jolly, wise, non-hypocrite peace-monger. And turning off your PC at night costs you money. Okay, just to indulge your latest fantasy and amuse our readers, I'll bite: What in the world are you talking about?

Dave: I don't need you to indulge me, sir; that's what my mom is for. As to your point, let's do some math. Your article says that for 10,000 computers, you can save $260,000 per year. That's $26 per computer. Per year. I lose more than that due to gas evaporating out of my gas tank. But now suppose I have to shut my PC down at night (5 minutes babysitting it to make sure it doesn't get "hung") and turn it on again in the morning (another 10 minutes). Assuming I'm a typical knowledge worker making $80,000/year, that means my time is worth $40/hour. You just cost the company $2,500. No, wait, $2,474. I forgot to include your shutting-down-the-PC dividend. Oh, per employee. That's 25 million bucks.

Rick: Ow! Owwwww! Stop it! You're making my sides hurt. Breathe, breathe. Okay. Whew, thanks, haven't had a laugh like that in years. They really should hire better teachers at the institution where you're kept, as "assumptive math" is not the same as real math. For starters, if you think the average worker in this scenario clears $80K annually, your meds are even more out of whack than last week. Think call centers, data-entry pools, government institutions -- these places employ thousands of workers who barely clear minimum wage. Meanwhile, do you honestly believe that it consumes 15 minutes of real-world work time to start and shut down a PC? Even if that were true (and that's a big fat "if"), a savvy IT department could easily schedule auto-wake and auto-shutdown routines to compensate.

Dave: Hey, feel free to fiddle with the numbers. I specifically called out knowledge workers, not call centers, but let's run with that. You'd have to offer a salary of less than 42 cents per hour for your employees' loss of productivity to be equal to the savings you get from shutting down their PCs every night. Sign me up for that job! As to your point about auto-wake, well, you're just wrong. You can execute a script that shuts PCs down, but there's no magical script in all the fairy kingdoms of your mystical IT universe that will automatically cold-start a PC. You can wake a machine from sleep or hibernation, of course, which is exactly what everyone should do -- sleep, for example, uses about 10% of the energy used by a PC running at full power. There's your real-world savings, blockhead.

Rick: Wow, your math continues to be fuzzier than a barrel of kiwis. Let's take salary out of this: Your whole premise is based on the insane belief that businesses lose 15 minutes of worker productivity to PC startup and shutdown. Come on: Only a spyware-infested 486 could take 10 minutes to boot. As for shutdown taking five minutes, that's just plain ridiculous. Two clicks and you can walk away. Show me a worker who babysits a PC that's shutting down. And for that matter, show me a PC that takes five minutes to power off. I'll even take a leap into Crazy-Dave Town and say, yes, okay, turning the machine on and off costs a worker 15 minutes of his day. If I'm an employer who stands to save $260K annually, here's what I say to my employee: "Show up 10 minutes early and plan to stay 5 minutes late. In return, you keep your job." Wake up and smell the reality, dingus.

Dave: While I suppose you're using some amazing computer sent back in time from the future (perhaps Summer Glau dropped it off at your house on her way to see John Conner), the rest of us use real computers. My PC is a fairly new quad-core with 2GB of RAM, and on days when I start my computer from a cold boot, 10 minutes is a conservative estimate -- very conservative. It's not just the boot time. I also have to launch a number of huge apps and restore the files I had been using the night before. But you're right, it should be my responsibility to get to work early to get everything up and running. Of course, that doesn't solve the problem of when IT can push down automatic updates, install virus definitions, and run backups. I suppose all that can happen at 1 p.m., and workers can just deal with the resulting performance issues. According to you, employees should be grateful to have a job at all.

Rick: Damn right! Ask employers and employees alike what they'd rather do: Make a few changes to the way they work and keep the lights on, or be rigid, inflexible, and out of business. It's lucky for your company that you're not upper management. Seriously, your arguments here are unusually devil's-advocate, even for you. Bottom line: Unused computers left running for upwards of 14 hours per day waste extraordinary amounts of money, electricity, and natural resources. A few simple, inexpensive changes could fix that. Why are you so opposed?

Dave: I'm opposed on the basis of common sense. Your position suggests that you have no sense of perspective; you seem to discount the fact that people's time has monetary value and that ridiculous rules that hobble workplace productivity are to be embraced as long as they somehow contribute to some high-minded virtue like Thinking Green. Even when I showed you that real, quantifiable losses in productivity would outweigh your so-called "extraordinary waste" by six orders of magnitude you didn't even blink. I will allow that if you operate a 10,000-seat call center and you already treat your employees like cattle, then shutting down PCs at night to show a $260,000 savings on paper might be attractive. But I'm guessing that the folks reading this blog don't own 10,000-seat call centers, and the theoretical possibility of saving a few Benjamins each year would just get lost in the noise, especially when you factor in the loss of overnight system maintenance and other conveniences. So in the end, that's all this scheme is: noise.

Rick: The reason I didn't "blink" when presented with your "real, quantifiable losses in productivity" is that I find your math about as accurate as a six-year-old's. (Ironically, that's about where I place your sense of humor, too.) Of course, if we're both being honest, we don't have any real-world numbers to back our arguments. I'd love to hear some IT managers weigh in on this. In the meantime, Old Man Potter, I can only hope you'll recognize that every little bit helps. Whether it's shutting down PCs overnight (which, by the way, also lowers air-conditioning costs by reducing ambient heat) or just turning off your monitor when not in use, it all adds up. Making an effort to conserve electricity (and save money in the process) isn't nearly as evil as you make it out to be.

Okay, who won the debate? Hit the Talkback to declare a winner and share your PC-power arguments. When that's done, check out the previous Guy Vs. Guy entries, which are just as entertaining and enlightening.