It cost me WHAT!?

[johnatnro]

Ever wonder how much it costs to use your MJ? Sure, you know what you paid for it, but what about keeping the old computer fired up?

In my case, I decided to use my laptop with my MJ because it would cost considerably less, but how much? The simplest way I found to determine the cost was to buy a little gadget called "Kill A Watt." I paid under $20.00 plus shipping from X-tremegeek.com. Do a search for it to find the your best deal.

Keeping my laptop running costs me less than $0.05 per day (under $1.50 per month) with only MJ running. If I'm using the computer also, it is like the MJ is running free. Now that's pretty good. With a two-year MJ contract about $60.00, but the first month free, monthly cost plus power usage is about $4.10 per month! You can't beat that with a stick!

Sure MJ has a few glitches right now, but for the price, I can afford to wait around and help out if I can. I hope they can port numbers before I have to move it to another service, and shutting off MJ voicemail would be great. Maybe Santa Claus can come about nine months early.

[lenagainster]

Keeping my laptop running costs me less than $0.05 per day (under $1.50 per month) with only MJ running. .

At 14 cents per KWH, that's about right if your laptop is only drawing 15 watts. I've seen estimates that laptops draw between 15 and 45 watts. Triple the cost if your laptop is at the high end.

If using a desktop, the same source indicates 60 watts to 250 watts for a desktop computer, depending on speed and other factors. Add 35 watts for an LCD monitor or 85 watts for a CRT monitor, and you could be talking about $15 to $25 per month running the computer 24/7 to accomodate the MagicJack.

[kumar]

^^ That is why i don't keep my PC running 24/7 or host my own website.
Peace
Kumar

[johnatnro]

The cost of electricity including all the additional charges piled on totals $0.0981 in my area. Just the actual electricity cost is $0.053718, but add cost recovery, distribution charge, securitization charge, and securitization tax charge per KWH to get the actual price paid.

Southwest Michigan is only about 60% of my cost. I see you are in Maryland, 14 cents is pretty high.

[Redfeather]

I have a prepaid jitterbug. I give that number out along with the magicjack number. I tell them if they get a message to try again later to call the jitterbug number. I do not leave my computer on. The jitterbug is for the house because in case of emergencies my legally blind adult daughters can see the big numbers on the jitterbug verses a simple cell phone. It has a couple buttons and is easy to use. It has my cell phone number and my husband's cell phone number programmed into it. It states Mom. When Mom is highlighted all they do is push the big yes button to call and the no button to hang up. It is so easy. When my Net10 minutes run out I am switching over any buy my husband and I a jitterbug phone as well. They are prepaid and no monthly contracts. They have several programs to pick from. I do the prepaid program. I use the magicjack when I home and using the computer which is several hours several times a day. When I am not on the computer I turn it off. If there is a special call they will just have to try calling again. All my important contacts know exactly what to do, because I explalined it to them. It is simple. Dont need to let the computer be on all freaking day. This may not work for other people but it is that simple for me.

[majicjay]

Is it confirmed that running a desktop 24/7 would cost $14-$25 per month? It is rather hard to believe. Please provide true info.

Thanks.

Jay

[lenagainster]

Is it confirmed that running a desktop 24/7 would cost $14-$25 per month? It is rather hard to believe.

Jay

After Googling some sources about computer power consumption, I found the following info.

A laptop uses between 15 watts and 45 watts.
A desktop uses between 90 watts and 250 watts (depending on speed and what's inside, of course)
An LCD monitor uses about 40 watts
A CRT monitor uses about 90 watts.

Electricity costs between 10 cents per Kilowatt hour and 15 cents per KWh

So a low power laptop (15 watts) running 24/7 would use 24 (hours) X 30 (days) X 15 (watts) = 10800 watt-hours or
10.8 KWh
At 10 cents per KWh, that would be $1.08 for the month.

At the other extreme, a high power desktop (250 watts) with a CRT monitor (90 watts) would use
340 (watts) X 24 X 30 = 244.8 KWh of electricity per month which at 10 cents per KWh would be
$24.48

If I look at my past electric bills and just take the total cost divided by the KWh used, it works out to 14 cents per KWh. However some fees are fixed ($11/mo for supplying electricity) and other fees are proportional to the amount of electricity used (taxes, etc.) . In my case, I'd use about 12 cents per KWh.

Unless one is using a low-powered laptop, the cost of electricity (and the wear and tear on the computer) becomes a factor in the real cost of the MJ service.

[johnatnro]

I just factor in all the per kwh charges. The fixed charges will be there no matter what I use, so I don't add them in.

As Lena said, desktop $ can vary greatly. If you want to know EXACTLY what your computer costs to run, buy a little device called a Kill A Watt. You can search for it and find one for around $20.00 plus shipping online.

[snowwy66]

ever since the first day i've owned a pc. it never gets shut off. but i tried shutting it down for a month. only when i'm was at work or out and about. 4 weeks. at 50 hours a week for work. and probbly another 30 hours on the weekends. making a total of 230 hours the computer wasn't on. plus 7 hours a night, times 30 nights makes 210 +230 makes 460 hours computer was off. approximately one year ago. same we4ather conditions. not using much heat or much electricity. i saw no difference in my power bill from the previous years at the same time. so figure that one out. that was the only time i ever shut my pc off. so whatever i spend in electricity to keep pc running is nothing compared to the money i save in NOT having a monthly phone bill now.

[Bendle]

I know for me, my main PC is the heart of my network and runs 24/7 anyway. I thought I would share what I am doing on that PC.... a RAVE if you will

• It stores all my files, movies, music, data, on a striped second and third hard drive that the other network computers can access,
  it runs SyncBack (free) which makes nightly backups of that striped data drive to other attached firewire drives for redundant local data backup copies,
  it runs my Mozy.com ($50/yr) backup client for live offsite unlimited storage data backup (a third copy of my data stored off site at EMC and encrypted),
  it also runs my Azureus (free) torrent client 24/7 for downloading - mostly used for watching TV shows commercial free (often in HD),
  it runs Norton Ghost 12 (cheap!) doing nightly incremental images of my C:\ drive image to another (fourth) local hard drive ,
  it also runs my LOGMEIN.com (free) client so I can RemoteDesktop via a browser to my main PC from any computer anytime from the internet,
  it runs VMWare (Free) hosting a VM of Windows XP for the convenience of just having a second virtual PC to try out new stuff without junking up my main system,
  its dual display video card feeds the second extended desktop to a projector in my bonus room for watching DVD/TVTorrents/Netflix on a 100 inch screen
  and finally it runs my Magicjack (Cheap!)) as a service feeding my entire house wiring as my primary phone.

All works great... home built XP Pro PC, an older version of the beautiful Antec Sonata PC Case with Antec 350w PS, D865PERL mobo, 2Gigs RAM, 2.6g HT Intel proc, 4 hard drives, 3 Firewire drives, Dual plextor PX-712a DVDRW drives, internal 13n1 media card reader, Soundblaster Audigy Audio, Matrox P650 Millenium Video AGP 8x.... 100mbit NIC.

My network is AT&T DSL Extreme 6 (Love it!), running on a D-LINK DSL-2320B ADSL2/2+ DSL modem connected to a D-LINK DIR-655 Xtreme-N Gigabit router (Awesome Router), hosting my PC via ethernet and two other (handme down from friends) Gateway Desktop systems (one for wife via G-wireless, one for kids via 100mb ethernet), a MacBook laptop via draft-N, and a Wii via G-Wireless.

Nothing on my network is Gigabit due to the age of the PCs, however, my MacBook is Draft-N as I mentioned.

Been running my main system without failure since I built it in 2003 I think it was... running 24x7 and ROCK SOLID. I take canned air and blow it out every 6 months or so and that I think is key to any PC longevity. Dust and static kills. The most stable and enjoyable PC I ever built.

Rave over.

[kumar]

Here its 6.5 cents per KW:-p Not that i pay the bill or anything.
Peace
Kumar