Turning Off the Computer

[Rich Braun]

Prius-driving Cantabridgian that I am, I still leave my computers on 24/7.  I
simply *cannot* stand waiting for the bootup sequence.  For decades, no vendor
has dealt with this issue.  (Fastest boot time of any computer I've used?  A
VAX 750, circa 1983:  about 20 seconds.)

Apple's leading this effort thus far, with proper support of S3
suspend-to-RAM.  I can close up my MacBook, forget to turn off the power
button, toss it in the trunk of my car and forget about it for a few days and
then discover that my sessions are all still intact.

S2RAM burns less than a watt of energy in standby.  It's the wave of the Linux
future.  But alas it's still futuristic, I haven't been able to get it to work
in any real-world Linux situation.

Has anyone else here found a way to get this power-saving feature working the
way it does on a Mac?  (Basically it's like a screen-saver...reactivate and
*pop*, your screen and devices are back the way they were before.  A lot of
driver re-initialization has to happen under the hood to make it work right.)

This is a central part of my multi-room MythTV design.  For now, I have the
choice either of waiting 2 minutes for my TV to come on, or paying the
electric company a bit over $100/year for each MythTV setup that I run 24/7. 
I want five of these and I don't want to be paying the equivalent of a new TV
each year for the electricity to run these.  It would drive anyone nuts to
have each TV in the house require a full Linux/X reboot when you want to flip
on CNN or, dare I say it, the Sox.

-rich