New Intel iMac uses less electricity than a reading lamp?
Posted by Lab Rat
Back when Steve Jobs announced Apple would be switching over to Intel processors, you may remember he cited the Intel chip’s low power-consumption as one of the main reasons for the switch. A quick look at the iMac’s tech specs, however, and you may begin to wonder what the hype was about. The Intel iMac claims to use the same 180 Watts of power that the G5 iMac did. And as far as the new Intel MacBook Pro, it claims to use 85 Watts, compared to the PowerBook G4’s 65 Watts.
Of course, those are not really fair comparisons, as these new Intel machines are dual-core, meaning while they may not be saving you any money off your electricity bill, they ARE giving you twice the amount of computing power per-watt as their predecessors.
Additionally, a report over at InfoWorld claims there may be energy savings after all. The site says the real-world power consumption needs of an Intel iMac are far below Apple’s stated specs. In fact, they claim that even with both cores running at 100%, they measured a steady drain of only 95 Watts, almost half what Apple is claiming. That’s less than a standard 100 Watt light bulb folks!
So put on those reading glasses, grab a good book, and curl up in front of the soft glow of your iMac’s screen. Those 5 Watts you save will eventually add up to enough to afford a new 1GB iPod nano! (after about 37,250 hours or so).
37,250 hours?
well, if I bought TWO iMacs though, I could cut that down to a more reasonable 18,625 hours.
That’s a good point, Way Cool. As usual, the more you spend, the more you save.
Well Job statement about Performance per watt is just marketing spin to say your battery life in your laptop will be less.
He is giving everyone what they want faster processors but at a cost, battery life, reduced features like no FW800 or DL DVD W/R. Apple is still not showing battlery life for the new Macbook unlike all the previous Powerbooks which was 5 to 5.5 hours. Do not be surprised when they only run 3.5 hours. You could alway pay Newer Tech $155 for their new battery which gives you 45% more on the old Powerbook which will bring the new Macbook back win par with the old ones.
The moral of this story people be carefull what you scream at apple for, they might give you what you want but you loose lots in exchange.
That’s a crappy way of looking at things, Maestro. So Let’s analyze this a bit: Third-party manufacturers did not adopt firewire 800 as mainstream, so why keep putting it into future macs at a greater cost? If you actually have a powerbook g4 that gets 5 to 5.5 hours of battery life at normal use, i’d like to see it. that’d be a miracle. anyone would be lucky to get 3 hours at normal use. This is purely semantics, but the superdrives actually do read double layer discs. so let’s not go apple bashing when we don’t know what we’re talking about.
That is 4.2 years!!!!
Most reading lamps I’ve owned are 60 watts or less.
When a computer operates as clearly as a lamp, it will be commoditized, understandable, and beautiful. It must have no more than 3 parts.
85 watts my arse. Intel’s own specs show this chip pulling 105 watts. This is more Steve Jobs Bullsh*t, like the Macbook Slow running 4 times faster than the G4 Powerbook. Yeah right. How about selling me some swamp land to go along with my order Stevie. You can tell who smoked too much dope in the 70’s.
“85 watts my arse. Intel’s own specs show this chip pulling 105 watts.”
Learn to read specs.
Lauri – how did you get that? It says 31 watts for the 2.16GHz Core Duo on the intel website.
http://www.intel.com/products/processor/coreduo/specs.htm
Lauri works for IBM…
Jason,
I am not Apple bashing i am comsumer bashing, Apple did what the comsumer wanted not what was best. But if Apple wants to stay in business they have to do what the comsumer wants even if it not the best solution. There is a saying “the customer is not always right but you have to give them what they want.”
Also, I would recommend you read apple site they are the one who claims 5 to 5.5 hours on the older PBs and I have one and I can contest I been able to get 4 to 4.5 hrs if I use it properly with the various power saving modes. The worst I get is about 3.5 hours if I am working hard on my system not giving the drive a break or having the display brightness turned all the way up. I would recommend you get a new battery it sounds like your old one is a bit worn out. If we used your old worn out battery the new MB it would only get about 2 hours of life based on the power used by the new processor.
Also, the new MacBook DVD/CD drive does not support DL-W/R only DL-R so you can not write a DL DVD unlike the older PB’s so get your facts right.
Personally, I would give up a little processor spreed for battery time any day. Considering it is a portable computer and it to be used on the go and and places where you might not have power. So on a 5 hour plain flight is not much help if I got the fastest damn laptop if the battery ran out 2hrs into the trip.