I have wanted to do this for a while now, to see what the first run results would be, so I toddled over to Think Geek and purchased a Kill A Watt. They have a couple other models, a Kill A Watt EZ and the Watt's Up Pro - but they are too rich for me, so I opted for the $25.00 option.

Watt meter in hand I unplugged my entire system which is connected to a battery backup, and plugged in my new toy. Here are the results:

 Windows Vista Home Premium (SP 1)

• Spiked to 301 watts during boot (just after log in)
• ran at 279 - 291 watts sitting idle 3-5 minutes after boot
• ran at 182-191 watts while in pseudo sleep mode (monitors off and hard drives off)
• after 24 hours - 4.83 KWH

Windows XP Pro (SP 2)

• spiked to 302 watts during boot (just after the loading screen came up)
• ran at 255 - 265 watts sitting idle 3-5 minutes after boot
• ran at 155 - 165 watts while in pseudo sleep mode (monitors off and hard drives off)
• after 24 hours - 4.53 KWH

Conclusions

If I take these results and factor in the national average for electricity costs of 9.78 cents, then it costs me roughly $175.00 cents a year to run my machine under Vista, and $160.00 under Windows XP. I have both machines set to turn the monitors off after 15 minutes, and cycle the hard drives down after 3 hours of inactivity.

There are a couple of reasons why this surprised me, first being that I have more drives being used under XP with one of my drives not being recognized (since the raid drivers don't work) under Vista. The second being the much expanded power usage controls that Vista has. Being that Vista has the capability to actual control how much of the CPU you use, I would have figured the power draw would be less, but it seems initially that XP handles power better. The biggest difference between the two though is how willing I am to actually allow the computer to go into sleep mode. There is no way I am going to put my XP install in sleep mode, or hibernation - it simply won't come back.

This isn't the truest test either, during both tests I was using my computer normally, but I played no games and didn't have Photoshop open or any of those things, it was only to see what I get for running the whole shebang.

I'm not done yet though, so expect another run at this. I'm going to test my Vista install again only this time set it to sleep after 1 hour. I might also run another set of 24 hours tests where I play some games for a couple hours during the evening, as well as turn of the machine when I go to bed, and before I go to work - which should drop my annual operating costs down to $45.00 or so.

My wife and I have been remodeling her office for the past several weeks and since we finally got the new floor and cabinets in, I decided to rebuild her computer into a cabinet fit unit rather than the Aspire box case that I originally bought for it. It's been an okay machine other than the Celeron D runs very hot compared to my AMD; but it's bulky and wouldn't fit very well on her smaller desk surface.

I basically trashed the case for parts, keeping only the power button and LEDs from the parts installed. I did pull out the front panel USB, audio and FireWire board - but I didn't wind up putting it back in. Since the motherboard tray just slides out of the chassis, it was easy to keep everything altogether and I did very little cutting. The only part I had to really destroy was the front bezel to get the power switch out in a way that I could reuse the housing. These are the parts I kept, and these are the parts I didn't.

I was originally going to go and get some 1/4 or 3/8 inch plexiglass, and glue all of the pieces together, figuring that would be the easiest way to go about it. I'm glad I decided to use some of the left over good plywood I had instead - because it would have been a huge pain in the arse otherwise. Using 1/3 ply, I cut the bottom and face, plus 2 small corner pieces to add more rigidity to the face of it. After removing the LEDs from the other case, I decided to go to Radio Shack and get some new ones with a chrome casing, the main reason was to get them to fit better, but they look a lot better too.

After cutting the CD slot, slot for the LCD temperature display, two holes for the LEDs and the hole for the power button I set about painting and going through final assembly. The bulk of the work was done in a single day - I wasn't going for winning any awards - just getting it done really. Pictured is the completed case.

It turned out alright - nothing to really write home about - but it was fun, and I learned a lot about what works and what doesn't when doing this sort of thing. First and foremost I learned I don't have the right tools for doing really fine and precise wood work. A coping saw is very difficult to use, and always make sure something is right-side-up before you silicon it into place. After getting it fit into the cabinet as well, I had to make a couple of modifications - in particular I had to add a case fan back into it to keep it cool. I thought having it be open would be enough, but no.

One thing that would have been nice though is to have had a hard drive cage to mount the DVD and hard drive rather than custom fabricating aluminum mounts for everything. I still want to build another custom PC - but right now I have no idea what I would do.