The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Wake in Fright Gordon Woolf |
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I woke. The red digital display by the bedside was flashing, but, more
disturbing, music was coming from the other end of the house. I made my way carefully, and turned off the CD player. No one had entered the house. Next time we returned from a weekend away, to music as we unlocked the front door. I worked out that the CD player, although switched off, would start playing if the mains power was turned off and then on again, as in a power cut. I now unplug it when it is not in use. |
The title is used with acknowledgements to Kenneth Cook, whose tale of a schoolteacher who disintegrates mentally when stranded in the Outback was turned in 1971 into a joint US-Australian movie starring Chips Rafferty and Jack Thompson. The movie was relabelled as "The Outback" for some markets and shortened for TV but was, according to US reviewer Leonard Maltin "still unlikely to be endorsed by the Australian tourist commission". |
Much more recently, I picked up the phone and heard the chatter of a modem
connection. But the task bar of my computer was not showing an active connection, so I could not right-click with the mouse and close the
connection. Instinctively I reached for the black rocker switch at the back
of the computer - and it wasn't there!
In this case hitting the blue button on the front was enough - everything
died, and when it restarted it did not try again to make a connection. I've
been too scared to check with Telstra whether it was dialling the local
Internet number or a number of its own. I'll find out when the bill comes.
But my new computer, bought this year, is not alone in its lack of a
physical on-off switch. It has a button which seems to switch the power
off, but it can still be switched on by many means if the settings within
the machine allow it. It can be woken by a time signal, or by the phone
ringing through an external or internal modem - or... In other words, off
is not really off.
The industry is quite open about it. For example, the Windows XP Help file
states: "ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) is the
foundation for the OnNow industry initiative that allows system
manufacturers to deliver computers that start at the touch of a key on a
keyboard."
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In this instance, the call to make a modem connection seems to have come
from a remnant of a program I had tried out earlier that day - a backup
program which was on a magazine CD and which appeared to be free, but which
immediately wanted to make an Internet connection to its home base. I was
not connected at the time, but it kept bringing up a dialog to connect, and
I kept clicking Cancel, or Work Offline, or hitting the close box cross in
the top right.
It was not discouraged, but I was ... discouraged from using the program at
all. I went to the Control Panel and went through the formalities of the
"Add or Remove Programs" dialog but fatally, did not restart the computer.
What was left was the rump of a program which remained to try to make the
Internet connection for a not non-existent program.
Like an alien robotic life form in some Isaac Asimov science fiction tale,
it would continue trying until eventually killed. But in this case it was
not controlled by Asimov's three laws of robot behaviour.
Alongside are some other hints on things to check to make sure that your
computer does not awake to do things which might frighten you.
Enquiries showed that while a simple 4-socket power strip can be bought for
around $4, a power board with individual switches can cost almost 20 times
that amount - almost as much as some of the devices I would plug into it.
Generally, faced with a suggestion that some dramatic change for the worse
in our lifestyle might be due to some major conspiracy or due to
incompetence, I'll opt for the latter. But in the meantime, will anyone
join me in lobbying for Government legislation to insist on the
installation of on/off rocker switches? We might see if it would be any
good to start a National Organisation to Guarantee On/Off Devices...
| On Regaining Control... To make sure your computer is not waking to perform a scheduled task: Click Start, click All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Scheduled Tasks. Right-click each task, and then click Properties. Deselect the Wake the Computer to Run this Task check box. By default, power management is set to not starting scheduled tasks if the computer is running on battery power. Power Options in Control Panel: You can use these to reduce power consumption and there are a mass of settings. For example, it can be used to turn off your monitor and hard disks automatically to save power or to put the computer on standby when it is idle. When you want to use the computer again, it comes out of standby quickly, and your desktop is restored exactly as you left it. Standby is useful for conserving battery power in portable computers, but it does not save your desktop state to disk, so a power failure while on Standby can cause you to lose unsaved information. You can also put your computer in hibernation. This saves everything in memory onto disk, turns off your monitor and hard disk, and then turns off your computer. When you restart, your desktop is restored exactly as you left it. It takes longer to bring your computer out of hibernation than out of standby. The Windows Help files suggest: "Put your computer in hibernation when you will be away from the computer for an extended time or overnight." The Windows help file states: "Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) is an open industry specification that defines a flexible and extensible hardware interface for the system board. Software designers use this specification to integrate power management features throughout a computer system, including hardware, the operating system, and application software. This integration enables Windows to determine which applications are active and handle all of the power management resources for computer subsystems and peripherals." |
About the Author
Gordon Woolf is a long time Melb PC member whose articles now appear in
user group publications around the world. His Web site is at
http://www.worsleypress.com.
Currently he is completing, in association with an entrenched Macintosh
user, a book on starting or buying a retail shop.
Reprinted from the June 2003 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
