People thinking that they are saving money from more energy efficient products

[badass]

I've posted this seperately to make this clear it's not aimed at CAT or any one else.
One of the issues with any debate about energy consumption and the environment is that it seems to polarise people.
On each side, people will cherry pick facts/figures or as is more often the case, just repeat unsubstantiated rubbish that has no basis in reality. (often guesswork based on someone's position stated as fact)

One of the favourite fallacies quoted by the anti green internet forum lobby is massively overquoting the cost in energy of manufacturing a new car. I often see this repeated and it's never backed up with evidence as it is completely false.
See the answer to the question below. The absolute vast majority of energy consumed by a vehicle is running it. In the case of an (admittedly old) car, the car userd as much energy in its first year as it did to manufacture.
They have looked at the entire lifecycle of energy consumption - i.e. not just the energy in the fuel but the energy used to extract, transport and refine the fuel. The same goes for the manufacturing.
http://answers.google.com/answers/th...id/433981.html

Using an old car isn't be best rebuttal i'll be the first to admit but it should hopefully convince some of the more open minded to reconsider their entrenched views on more fuel efficient vehicles.
If that old car was replaced by a newer, 10% more fuel efficient car, in terms of energy, the break even point is about 10 years.

In terms of a hybrid car, for it to be worthwhile from an energy standpoint, you look at how much extra energy is required to create compared to a non hybrid and compare the real world energy consumption of both. I suspect the difference to create the vehicles is small however in town driving, the enconomy gains can be sizable.

Replacing a 10 year old car in terms of energy consumption with a current car is almost a no brainer:
A 2004 Golf 1.9 TDI (100 BHP) does 52 MPG on the combined cycle.
A 2013 Gold 1.6 TDI (105 BHP) does 74 MPG on the combined cycle.
In terms of energy (admittedly ignoring the possibility that the new car takes more energy to produce than the old one) the break even point is a gnat's whisker over 3 years.
In terms of money, almost the opposite is true. Depreciation over the first 3 years will annihilate any fuel economy savings. You'd need to do 86,000 miles per year to break even and that ignores the increased depreciation of doing over 200,000 miles in 3 years!

In general, going for something more fuel efficient is better for the environment, even taking into account the fact that the new car building costs a lot of energy. Just it's a lot worse for the wallet!

I personally have no problem with the government subsidising solar panels in the way they have, but not for environmental reasons. Anything that reduces european reliance on Russian gas must be a good thing

[wasabi]

I've been trying to work out if LED lights bulbs are going to be a suitable replacement for my standard energy saving light bulbs I have in my flat. Anyone been looking at the LED light bulbs?

Yep. GU10s unreliable (transformer overheats) and expensive.

MR16s very reliable and thus pay for themselves much quicker, but a bit more work to install.

You're not going to save a lot of money going from CFL to LED. dropping from 11 watt CFL to 5 watt LED isn't much in the big picture. The difference is mainly in the bulb type (LEDs best for spotlights, CFLs fo regualar B22s or E27s.)

[peterb]

Yes, and no. In your case it is important because you're consuming power serially to match your solar power output. For everyone else the difference is academic.

It isn't academic when people are fooled (or legislation passed) on the grounds that buying a low power device will automatically save them energy and be cheaper to run.

But yes, it is more important for me with dual sources of energy. However, since having them installed, I have become more conscious of energy use in general.

BUT every Wh that comes into my house ultimately ends up in the form of heat, whether it does some other form of work in the process, so the next thing I need to look at is improving the thermal insulation of my house so that the waste heat is retained, whether it is heat from my computer or my fridge compressor. Retaining that heat will have an impact on the consumption of fuel for the sole purpose of heating.

I my house was perfectly insulated, it would matter what the efficiency of my power supply was, because the total energy consumed would be contributing to my background heating.

There have been some experimental high thermal efficiency houses builtusing heat exchanges to reclaim heat from ventilation exhaust.. (no trickle ventilation, which is I wasteful) and the additional heating costs very low indeed.

[Bluecube]

Had a quick scan through the thread and picked up one small thing that I have to comment on - TVs on standby should (by law AFAIK) use less than 0.1W of power. While it's not as power efficient as turning the TV off, it's a tiny amount of electricity that costs peanuts. Indeed many TVs don't even have physical off buttons any more!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

That's an incredibly bad example.
Payback over 3 years is equivalent to nearly 27% interest on the investment. Yes, the new server will eventually break but I doubt it waill last less than 6 years.
Look at it another way: If someone offered you a savings account that paid 27% interest, would you not move as much of your money as you could to it and even consider getting a loan at 4% to put more money into it?

It isn't at all.

The current server is more than enough to do the job and if he replaced the server earlier the,earlier generation platforms would not be as efficient at low load as newer generation systems,so the cost saving would have been less.

Plus TBH until relatively recently the low load power consumption of systems has not changed massively when compared to the 45NM Core2s on an efficient motherboard.

People on forums always make excuses to buy new shiny equipment but hardly ever bother too look at how much power consumption is being reduced,or even the initial outlay for hardware.

Your forgetting - one system has zero outlay at the point it was a server and the other has an outlay. You are still paying for electricity for both.

Firstly,the old hardware was in use as a gaming computer for like three years,and it has been re-used as a server since 2012.

Look at the cost in new hardware,even with me including percentage increases in cost per kWh(I did it at roughly 10%a year for leccy),it would still take at least THREE years at least for the electricity savings to cover the cost of buying the new hardware.

So in the end its pointless just splunking money on hardware which is not going to give any new improvement in performance,since you are spending MORE money just to do the same thing. It does not also change the fact,that simply upgrading said hardware more often is creating more electronic waste anyway,and the more upgrade cycles you do the more you are spending anyway.

People fail to realise the amount of problems we are having with increasing amounts of electronic waste we are having and the fact recycling is not even keeping up with it.

It will be far better in THREE years,when the hardware most likely would be at that point nearly 8 years old(probably would die by then),and there have been further drops in idle/low load power consumption. Plus in the next three years,his gaming rig will probably be upgraded,meaning a newer lower power platform can be substituted at zero additional cost.


Look at an old 35 year old Kenwood Chef. Someone upgrading every 5 years over 35 years to the latest mixer has spent far more money and probably not saved anything in leccy cost anyway.

People need to get over this fallacy that sticking with older tech is always worse - a kitchen mixer from 14 years ago is not really any more efficient than one made 2 years ago.

Its an extreme example - but tech does not always move forward as much as people think.

Plus even with cars its the same things - is upgrading your car every two years worth it,or every 4 to 5 years?? Even finanically it makes more sense to buy a secondhand car which is more than two years old to three years old as depreciation is worse initially,and I seriously doubt that every three years we have mahoosive changes in car effiency lest its a major platform change or some new innovation.

FFS,most of the biggest changes in car effiency happen during major platform changes - not the crappy little cosmetic ones every two years or so,with slightly refreshed versions of the same engines.

The other thing is people doing it for main desktops by sidegrading in performance and splunking money to save power.

I had a Shuttle running a E4300 followed by a Q6600 ,both overclocked,running overclocked graphics cards,with a high power consumption 975X chipset and a less than 80+ efficient SFF PSU(late 70s,since it was before 80+ became common) for nearly 4 and three quarter years.

Yet,my power consumption costs for the computer were not high.

Why??

Because I rebuilt a three year old laptop(at the time) which would have been thrown away and used that for 4 years to 5 years to web browse and do basic stuff. It was a 12.1" lappy with a Pentium M,which I manually undervolted and modded to reduce power consumption and ran off a 60W power block,and consumed far less than that most of the time.

That laptop instead of being in the tip lasted nearly 8 to 9 years.

Newer laptops might have been faster,but not always consuming massively less power.

I used my desktop when needed and switched it off,and only replaced it when the motherboard went and the CPU was starting to become a limitation for certain things.

Used my laptop for everything else including writing documents several 100 pages long,etc.

Yet someone who upgraded several times over that time,would have wasted more money,probably wasted more power and probably created more waste.

Usage habits make far more impact on the environment than people think.

But people would rather have their crap usage habits,and use technology to solve the problem then actually do something that might cause them to lift a finger.

How many people would eat only seasonally sourced local produce instead of eating stuff shipped all the way from China since they would get bored quickly??

Don't believe me - look at the amount of frozen meat and fish imported from Thailand and China in most supermarkets.

Ships in fact end up producing a lot of pollution through the low grade fuels they burn.

[TooNice]

It is not only about the money though.

In regards to usage habit, I tend to leave a PC (desktop or laptop - whichever uses less power if I have more than one, though right now I only use one laptop anyway) on 24/7 (many reasons for it), so a more efficient device is important. And it is not just about running cost since it might not offset premium the manufacturer charge for the newer process used to make, say, the CPU more efficient. But there is also heat and / or the noise associated with cooling.

And I am not not sure if if Eneloop / similar rechargeable batteries is actually efficient at saving me money. I mean, I can get a pretty big pile of cheap alkaline batteries for the cost four of them and that's before getting into the cost of a charger and off course the electricity used to recharge. But I also hate disposing batteries. As a kid I recall a lesson about the impact certain things have on the environment when improperly disposed of and batteries aren't nice. With big things like CRT monitors, fridge etc. you can get the council to collect it but with things like batteries you kind of have to go out of the way (more so in UK than some other countries) to have it disposed of properly. I don't claim to be captain planet, and I can most certainly do more for the environment. But better a little than not at all. I have to acknowledge however that I am no environment expert, and do not know, for instance, the environmental impact of manufacturing an Eneloop vs an alkaline battery. For all I know, the later could be far more environmental friendly. Like everyone else, I have finite time and can't work out every detail. Presumably, that also apply to the cost saving aspect for some people. I wouldn't be too surprised if some people think as follows "Hopefully, this will save me money in the long run. If not, then I will have at least done a little something for the environment. Failing that, well unlucky".

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The problem is if people were saying I am doing XYZ because I am concerned about the environment it would be understandable.

But 9/10 people actually do since they are thinking they will save money - I have rarely heard anyone outside a handful of people in the last decade want to get a more efficient car,since they are concerned about the environment. Its always in the amount of money they want to save,because the fuel prices have increased or the government has passed stricter laws which force companies to comply,or reduced taxation on cars which pass certain requirements.

Its pretty much the same with loads of things - the truely environmentalist types I have bumped into seem to have a far greater sense of things overall,than doing a token effort here and there.

[mikeo01]

From all the examples given so far, energy efficient cars, locally sourced products etc, there is one sole factor why not as many people are adopting them as they should be, initial cost.

Most locally sourced food, organic or things sourced within the UK are usually pricer than an import.

Same for cars, energy efficient cars cost a whack than that second hander you've seen down the road.

A lot of people go with AMD chips, why? Initial cost.


Do these people care about the environment? Maybe. Do they want to make an impact? Maybe. Are they limited purely because things are so darn expensive and too high of an impact to an individual or family? More probably.


Some people hear have been talking about solar panels, yeah, how cheap is the initial cost? Exactly. Issue being the majority have just enough to pay for the bills and without going over to the minimum wage argument you can see it is just one big domino affect.


Unless said people are well off they probably can't afford to just "spend the little extra on something more efficient" as in the meantime things do not pay for themselves.


People who do buy energy efficient products are probably the people who can afford to replace their items. Important word there, can afford to replace. If you can afford to replace often then you are already making a bad decision. Buy something good and what you can afford and stick with it.

Of course the marketing guys aren't going to stop shoving it down our throats, so unfortunately most people won't really no any better. Nor does the majority have time to do a research project into whether the marketing is BS or not. Otherwise they would of taken up some type of science.

But then again, going backhand here the majority won't be bothered to look at the figures and work the math out.


Double wammy. But then again that is what companies want. Confuse the customers and convince them that this product that they are about to buy is spectacular.
It is both sides at the end of the day. Guess what the driving force is for both parties? Money. You can't argue with that. Money is the leading factory in the majority of all decisions made by both parties.

Even if both parties cared solely about the environment and waste, I'd place a bet that the money factor would replace that emotional feeling.

Summary: Greed.

[Top_gun]

Why are people so gullible to "energy effiency" marketing??

Where is your evidence that all people are gullible to energy efficiency marketing? Im not.

I see people paying MORE for more energy efficient things,thinking they are saving money but in reality they are spending more over time,since:
1.)The savings in power are not really enough to offset the higher cost of the product overall
2.)People tend to think since they are using something more energy efficient they can use it more,but end up still spending more overall
3.)Concentrate on the WRONG appliances/products to save energy on

I think substantial energy savings can be made by choosing energy efficient appliances. I should recoup my costs in five years and then through my own calculations save a further £500 over a ten year period.

In many cases,your usage habits are more important regarding energy costs,than actually the product itself.

Sometimes, but you can't exactly switch on and off a fridge freezer to save energy, can you? Nor can you make do without lights when it get dark. You're not even allowed to switch off your router to save energy.

Is it people just buying these products so that they feel "better" about contributing to the environment or is that people are just poor at maths??

Quite a lazy statement here. I personally conduct a thorough research on a possible product purchase. My electricity bill has dropped by more than 50 per cent as a result of behaviour and choosing wisely energy efficient devices. Not exactly bad at maths, am I?

Is the media at fault for not informing people better??

Sorry, do you mean should the media make the same lazy assumptions as you do? Then the answer is no. Manufacturers must be encourage to further improve energy efficiency performance of their appliances. Much in the same way chip manufacturers build faster chips each year. No one ever complains about the small gain of speed in chips at extortionate prices so why do people complain about small gains of energy savings to save the environment and money?

[wasabi]

Sorry, do you mean should the media make the same lazy assumptions as you do? Then the answer is no. Manufacturers must be encourage to further improve energy efficiency performance of their appliances. Much in the same way chip manufacturers build faster chips each year. No one ever complains about the small gain of speed in chips at extortionate prices so why do people complain about small gains of energy savings to save the environment and money?

Because chips get better due to competition and market demand. Energy efficiency usually comes about by government dictat and taxes.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Where is your evidence that all people are gullible to energy efficiency marketing? Im not.

Where is your evidence to show people are not gullible??

Also,"all" - where did I say all?

I have seen plenty of examples of those who would sidegrade and then spend another £100 more for an item they would replace in two to three years,but would take 4 to 5 years to get the money back.

I think substantial energy savings can be made by choosing energy efficient appliances. I should recoup my costs in five years and then through my own calculations save a further £500 over a ten year period.

Don't disagree with that,but again depends on the product you are going to buy,since lifespans are different.

Sometimes, but you can't exactly switch on and off a fridge freezer to save energy, can you? Nor can you make do without lights when it get dark. You're not even allowed to switch off your router to save energy.

Not sometimes,usage habits are important.

Someone who is living alone in a flat with a huge american style freezer which is "A" rated,which is never defrosted and filled with food which they will probably chuck away,is going to be wasting far more energy than someone actually choosing a smaller freezer with similar effiency and a size relevant to their lifestyle.

Even with lights,people keeping on three or four roomlights on in the house,when they are spending the next 5 hours in one room only.

Quite a lazy statement here. I personally conduct a thorough research on a possible product purchase. My electricity bill has dropped by more than 50 per cent as a result of behaviour and choosing wisely energy efficient devices. Not exactly bad at maths, am I?

Quite a lazy statement there. Yet I have seen plenty of people unable to do the maths and spend more,and I have had to step and tell them how much money they are saving since they overestimate how much leccy they are saving,or how long they will keep said appliances/electronics. Have done it so many times on forums in the last six years myself.

Ask most people,what they pay per kWh and see if they actually know it??

But then OFC,I assume you have made sure that you have taken in the account the upfront costs and any cost of loans you might have taken to make sure you can buy said appliances.

Also,the cost of that money not going into savings or things like not overpaying your mortgage(so you reduce overall interest payments).

Sorry, do you mean should the media make the same lazy assumptions as you do? Then the answer is no. Manufacturers must be encourage to further improve energy efficiency performance of their appliances. Much in the same way chip manufacturers build faster chips each year.

More of your lazy assumptions and you seemed to be very gullible if you believe all the bumpf from such companies,unless you have a vested interest in such companies.

Most media outlets are businesses not non for profit and if the media was so unbiased and honest,then why all the regulation from our government then?

Most major steps in efficiency of appliances and making sure that it is accessible to most people has been due to government involvement.

But OFC you do know why CCFLs became cheaper - the Chinese government massively invested in them as they realised that for a nation of a bilion people,the lowering of power demands to their grid would be massive. I remember when CCFL lamps were like £10+ 20 years ago,and companies were charging massive premiums and yet FL technology of the sort was NOT new even then.

It also took government subsidies in UK to further drive adoption of said CCFLs and EU banning of old style bulbs. Not companies and not the media. It was governments.

Lower emissions in cars were primarily started by government pushes decades ago - the US took a leading role in this(ironically) and that was another example of a government acting. Not a company.

Lets move onto the media,with something close to our hearts - computers.

Maybe you think that you power consumption of PC parts should be measured by things like Furmark and Prime number generation,and power consumption cost differences should be calculated on running 24/7,which is nowhere near "normal" workloads let alone "normal" worktimes for people.

Perhaps instead of the lazy assumptions you make and trust in companies and review sites you have,perhaps you should do a bit more research into them.

But ultimately I would rather have a healthy dose of scepticism.

Or maybe you do run Furmark and Prime number generation 24/7 on your computer. Each to their own I suppose.

Companies exist to make profit and are there to help themselves first.

But OFC,people's excellent maths skills are bourne out in the high levels of personal debt that many people in this country have - everyone will try and blame the bankers. Even the great maths skills of the banking sector showed "so called experts" could not do a good job.

Yes and our media was doing a stellar job there too in informing us.

No one ever complains about the small gain of speed in chips at extortionate prices so why do people complain about small gains of energy savings to save the environment and money?

Not sure if you are joking. I see plenty of people on forums,and in fact in real life complaining about small gains in the speed of chips especially with slow downs in general CPU and GPU performance boosts over time.


But then there are plenty who would follow whatever advertising tells them,and pay extra for miniscule improvements,just because its new,which is fine. But then its when the justification comes,oh "Tahiti is a magical place".

But you seem to be also in denial at the amount of electronic waste being generated each year:

http://www.theguardian.com/sustainab...lectronic-junk

Recycling cannot keep up and its being dumped in the 3rd world with massive economic and environmental consequences.

Cool,lets just upgrade all the time. Its not like the rest of the world needs clean land and water.

Unfortunately due to "angry" laziness tone you could not even fully read what I said:

Why are people so gullible to "energy effiency" marketing??

I see people paying MORE for more energy efficient things,thinking they are saving money but in reality they are spending more over time,since:
1.)The savings in power are not really enough to offset the higher cost of the product overall
2.)People tend to think since they are using something more energy efficient they can use it more,but end up still spending more overall
3.)Concentrate on the WRONG appliances/products to save energy on

In many cases,your usage habits are more important regarding energy costs,than actually the product itself.

Is it people just buying these products so that they feel "better" about contributing to the environment or is that people are just poor at maths??

Is the media at fault for not informing people better??

Next time learn to read what I said properly - I never said people should not spend extra on energy efficient appliances,but need to look more carefully at the maths before just believing every claim made by companies or the media which relies on their custom to survive.

If you actually interacted with a bigger range of people than you realise,plenty of people cannot do the maths,just because "you" boast you can or that even a reasonable of my mates can.

Unfortunately for everyone,if most people could do the maths,we would not be nearly 1.4 trillion pounds in debt,and in the middle of a generally rattled economy.

Anyway,I will have to agree to disagree with you and keep it at that.

[peterb]

Where is your evidence to show people are not gullible??

Thats not the point! You made the assertion about gullibility - Top_gun is asking you to justify that. And in an earlier post you said that 9 out of 10 people thought that they would save money by switching to more efficient components - where did that 90% figure come from?

I think substantial energy savings can be made by choosing energy efficient appliances. I should recoup my costs in five years and then through my own calculations save a further £500 over a ten year period.

That is a bold statement - on what basis do you state that? Is that the direct cost of running the appliance? But are you taking into account the side effects?
For example...

Lets say (for the purposes of illustration) that you can heat your living space with a 3 bar (3 Kilowatts) by running it for three hours - 9 Kwh. At the same time, you run two computers which take 500Watts each. You run those for the same time as your fire, so you are using 4KWh of energy. Now, you swap your power supplies so that your computers only use 250W, so over the 4 hour period, your total energy consumption is only 10.5Kwh. All very good. But you have effectively reduced the heat input into your room, because the energy you import into it all ends up as heat, so you might find that your room is uncomfortably cool, so you switch on another another heater - so your energy consumption goes back up, so your total energy consumption either up or stays the same, even though you might be reducing power consumption in the computers.

Now that is a trivial example, although it illustrates the point. By reducing the heat input to your home from the appliances, your background heating requirement may increase.

The only real and guaranteed way of using less energy is to reduce the overall thermal loss from the rom (or house) ie - better insulation.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Why are people so gullible to "energy effiency" marketing??

I see people paying MORE for more energy efficient things,thinking they are saving money but in reality they are spending more over time,since:
1.)The savings in power are not really enough to offset the higher cost of the product overall
2.)People tend to think since they are using something more energy efficient they can use it more,but end up still spending more overall
3.)Concentrate on the WRONG appliances/products to save energy on

In many cases,your usage habits are more important regarding energy costs,than actually the product itself.

Is it people just buying these products so that they feel "better" about contributing to the environment or is that people are just poor at maths??

Is the media at fault for not informing people better??

Where is your evidence that all people are gullible to energy efficiency marketing? Im not.

Where is your evidence to show people are not gullible??

Thats not the point! You made the assertion about gullibility - Top_gun is asking you to justify that. And in an earlier post you said that 9 out of 10 people thought that they would save money by switching to more efficient components - where did that 90% figure come from?

He was talking about my OP - why don't you look at what he was quoting. So at this point he needs to prove that I am wrong!

Did I say "all" people are gullible - emm what??

I also like how some of you ignore the third point and make it sound like I am against spending extra on more efficient items.

With regards at least for computers - literally in EVERY thread people start talking about paying more for a more efficient component I have posted in the last 4 to 8 years,I have always shown that their calculations are not that correct. Thats on three or four tech major forums alone and huge ones.

I have rarely,rarely seen ANYONE actually do the maths when it comes to these things. People don't seem to understand the cost of leccy per kWh,or actual power draw differences or even what the relevant load differences are,or where to even find the information.

Heck,people don't even make actual estimations of how many hours under load which they will be running every week or month.

Most of the time,its "it will save you money" so you can spend more on an item.

I have rarely ever see it work out within the effective lifespan of a computer.

The same goes with PSUs and the rest of it.

Edit!!
Wow,just wow.

Thats not the point! You made the assertion about gullibility - Top_gun is asking you to justify that. And in an earlier post you said that 9 out of 10 people thought that they would save money by switching to more efficient components - where did that 90% figure come from?

Where is your evidence that all people are gullible to energy efficiency marketing? Im not.

The problem is if people were saying I am doing XYZ because I am concerned about the environment it would be understandable.

But 9/10 people actually do since they are thinking they will save money - I have rarely heard anyone outside a handful of people in the last decade want to get a more efficient car,since they are concerned about the environment. Its always in the amount of money they want to save,because the fuel prices have increased or the government has passed stricter laws which force companies to comply,or reduced taxation on cars which pass certain requirements.

Its pretty much the same with loads of things - the truely environmentalist types I have bumped into seem to have a far greater sense of things overall,than doing a token effort here and there.

I like how can conflate that with the OP - when its obvious that I said 9/10 people I have talked to have said its more financial reasons they want efficiency not environmental.

Where did I say 9/10 were gullible?? Emm,what??

Yes,I will stand by the fact 90%(probably more actually) of all people I have met or known in the last 10 years,have been more worried about saving money,than 90% wanting to help the planet alone.

The truely environmental types I met are a different breed of people,so to say and they are rare in my experience.

But then I have mostly lived in large cities and built up areas in a few countries,not the middle of Norfolk so YMMV.

[wasabi]

Thats not the point! You made the assertion about gullibility - Top_gun is asking you to justify that.

Allow me....

51 percent.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The best thing is the assertion was made about people I had talked too - the whole "all" thing was what Topgun added to the mix. Yet in my OP I did not say all people. Maybe I should invoke Nazis now.

[KeyboardDemon]

Apologies/Disclaimers first: Not read the entire 44 posts previously posted so if I am repeating older points please excuse me, I did read the first few posts on page 1.

We have moved over to energy efficient lights, even replaced some units with LED lights and to tell the truth the best solution we have found to improving energy efficiency is still simply turning off the devices that aren't being used. It's a fantastic way to save some money. I don't put my PC on standby, I turn it off, even if I know I'll be turning it back on in less than hour. When I turn it on I hit the power button and while the PC is starting up I reach forward and turn on my monitor, even though leaving it on standby would mean my monitor would turn on a few seconds sooner, as that's probably how long it takes my finger to land on the button, but I don't need a display on my monitor until the PC has booted to the login screen.