[oclug] [OT] Monitor power cosumption (was: Monitor Brightness Too High

[Adrian Irving-Beer]

On Tue, Oct 31, 2006 at 04:13:17PM -0500, mlist at safenet-inc.com wrote:

> But just now I looked at the back of my 19-inch Dell (here at the
> office and it says 120V and 2A, exactly the same as the 20-inch LCD
> sitting next to it (dual-head setup and one of my CRTs died so I had
> it replaced).

As I recall, the amperage / wattage given for electronics -- CRTs,
LCDs, PC power supplies, etc. -- are all just the maximum it may draw
at any given time.

For example, my laptop power supply is rated at 4.5A, but I can use my
system's battery drain to approximate the amperage usage.  With lowest
brightness on the LCD, disk idle, USB wireless, and X Windows running
but not really doing much, I can get down to about 1.3 amps.  With the
LCD disabled, it drops to about 1.1 amps.

The only way I've ever actually approached 4.5 amps of battery drain
was to have the LCD set to max brightness, the CPU working as hard as
possible, hard drive and CD reading non-stop, etc., all at the same
time.  Yet the system is rated 4.5A because that's the maximum it
will draw.

I think they're basically allowed to put any number there, so long as
they never exceed that.  It could be that they're just giving basic
monitor amperage numbers, yet the LCD is never going to approach 2A,
even at max brightness, etc.

AFAIK, the only way to really know for certain is to use a
measuring device.
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