Experimental

A laptop was plugged into the watts up? PRO and a baseline reading of its power consumption when it is turned off was taken (0 W). The laptop was then turned on and its power consumption was taken again (12.9 W). With no other programs running, a flash drive was inserted into a USB 2.0 port and a reading was taken of the total power consumption after equilibration. One document or video was opened from the flash drive and the maximum power reading was recorded. The same document or video was then opened directly from the laptop and the power reading was recorded again for comparison. A fourth reading of power consumption was taken when the flash drive was ejected from the laptop. This was done using flash drives of 256 MB, 2 GB (two separate flash drives; one is a micro), and 4 GB capacity.

Results

Table 1 summarizes the change in power consumption when a flash drive was plugged into the laptop, when a document or video was opened, and when the flash drive was ejected. Tables 2 and 3 provide more detailed data of the experiments.

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