Monitoring power usage

[Dissident Dan]

Does anyone know of any programs that let you monitor how much power your computer is using?

[BoulderHead]

Laptop or desktop ?
I would think something like this might likely have to be a motherboard or power supply option (requires a sensor, which means a hardware item). It would cost money but a device similar to the "Watts up?" could work in a worst case senario;

http://www.silentpcreview.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=19&page=1

[dduardo]

Depends on how you define power.

[Trilliet]

Are you using Windows XP?

If so go to
Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Performance
From there you can create logs which track everything going on on your computer. There is probably a counter in there you can add to track power consumption.

[russ_watters]

If you mean electric power, the best/simplest way is externally with an ammeter.

[7590]

Well I measured the wattage usage for my 2 computers and it interesting.
for example my main computer uses only 120 watts when the cpu is idle, just doing nothing with no power saving mode of any type.
My second computer uses 130 watts, but it's funny, it's just basicly like a 100 watt light bulb, anyways here is a link http://65.23.133.205/spec/ to what is exactly inside in my computer systems.