It has been a really odd spring in New England this year, we have gone from summer temps to end winter temps in a matter of hours. Is this a symptom of global warming or is it just a fact of living in New England that you never know can predict what mother nature will decide to throw around. Personally, I feel like regions of the world go through heating and cooling cycles, although I am sure humans have effects on them. I don't want to live without using electricity but I try and do what I can to limit that use to the best of my ability by turning off the lights when not in the room etc. But what about electronic equipment that gets left on all the time.

I know in my house my main computer gets left on all the time. Sometimes I need to remote into it at a friend's house to get a file in order to fix something, or even just to be a bit more secure in certain circumstances. Usually the day I do a shutdown on the machine and leave it off is the day I find myself needing to access it. Now of course there are ways around this problem with wake on LAN but those technologies tend to be flaky. So what I do is size my power supply appropriately and try and have the most efficient one I can, especially considering the majority of the time the machine is in an idle state.