The designers of modern pcs are doing there best to reduce power consumption with hard disks that shut down when not in use and so on. Generally modern peripherals that aren't doing anything draw very little power when idling. Over a day, though considering that refrigerators are getting more and more energy efficient, its probably pretty close to the same. when going full bore, the modern pc probably draws a couple hundred watts. when the hard disk and monitor shut down in idle power saving modes it may be less than half that. It varies too with brand and how much money they put into power savings and how you have the power management firmware which is often particular to a machine setup. The debate continues as to when, if ever, you should turn the machines off. If you're gonna use it several times during a day for an hour or more each time, then leave it onn. Night is a different question and i don't have a strong opinion As another respondant said, refrigerators draw lots, maybe 500 watts, when the compressor motor is on, but it is on maybe 1/4 of total time, in a day so the average may not be that different. Hope that helps, probably not much Tom Fowle Embedded Systems Developer/ Rehab engineer Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute 2318 Fillmore St. San Francisco, CA 94115 415-345-2123 (Voice) Internet [log in to unmask] VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List. To join or leave the list, send a message to [log in to unmask] In the body of the message, simply type "subscribe vicug-l" or "unsubscribe vicug-l" without the quotations. VICUG-L is archived on the World Wide Web at http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/vicug-l.html