Electronic devices never truly off

kung fu guykung fu guy
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
I have many plugged in devices that are never truly OFF. Even though lights are off and there is no activity. These devices are still very warm to the touch. From modems, routers, decoder boxes etc.....



I have an Seagate external backup drive I use with time machine. It works flawlessly. However, it seem to never shut down. When the mac is off, the drive still has the fan blowing endlessly. I turn the manual switch to OFF and the drive is still warm. The only way to be OFF is to unplug it.



Why is it still on?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 2
    hirohiro Posts: 2,663member
    Irresponsible demands over the years for near instant on performance in electronic devices. Ever since RCA debuted instant-on TV technology int eh '70s eliminating the couple minute warmup time consumers drove engineers to make power wasting design choices or see a device penalized out of the market.



    The idea is pervasive. HDs are also affected by this as their boot and spin-up time directly affect the computers boot or wake time. So all dives tend to keep semi-warm to avoid being frozen out of the business because they lower the attached hardware's perceived start-up time.



    Yeah, it's stupid and wasteful, but society as spent 5 decades driving tis bus. It's not stopping soon.
  • Reply 2 of 2
    kung fu guykung fu guy Posts: 158member
    Thanks for the sound explanation. Stupid and wasteful indeed.
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