Desktop heater
There was an interesting article in our local paper (Firda) this week about a man who has plumbed his computer into the heating system of his house so that he uses the heat generated to warm the bathroom. In the photo you can see inside the computer where water is being circulated round the processor. You can also see in the photo that the man is wearing a woollen sweater because all the heat that would normally be going to heat his work room is being transferred to the bathroom. He reckons that he saves about £200 a year and I'm sure he does save this amount of money from what he would normally spend to heat the bathroom but will spend an equal amount extra to heat his workroom. I hate to think what will happen when he comes to buy a new computer. Maybe if you buy the house you'd get the computer thrown in for nothing? It also says in the article that to maintain a comfortable temperature the computer must be active all the time so instead of switching to hibernate he gets it to solve long mathematical problems. I find it hard to believe that this is actually saving money, surely an electric heater is a more efficient way of producing heat energy than a computer, although I guess it all ends up as heat eventually. I wonder how much PE is stored in a HD.