I was wondering how much I was spending on my power bill by running a desktop PC on 24/7. So I used Meralco’s Appliance Calculator (MAC) and figured that I was spending about 900 pesos a month(!) for one desktop PC alone.

There are two things going against desktop PCs. First, they are space-hungry monsters, many with tower cases that demand their own share of your room real estate. And second, they wolf down energy like mad.

But the desktop world is learning a thing or two from the mobile universe. Consider:

o The growing niche for mini PC platforms that are about the size of a book

o The trend towards desktop PCs that run on Pentium M processors

o The move to make mobile hard drives standard equipment for desktops as well

Mobile parts and peripherals are designed for both space and energy economy. You don’t need a SuperTyphoon 2000 turbofan™ to cool a mobile processor. Parts that are designed for mobility demand less in terms of power and cooling technologies, as opposed to the latest desktops which seem to only get bigger and hotter and hungrier all the time.

More important, the processing power of mobility technologies have become good enough to challenge any welterweight desktop PC anytime. And since most desktop habitues don’t really need all that much firepower, desktop PCs based on mobile components are now becoming a viable, if not a more practical, option (Plus, couple that with an LCD screen and you have yourself a really power saving, space saving setup).

(Either that, or you can just get yourself a desknote PC, which may be the best of both worlds for the desk-bound set.)

If I ran my laptop 24/7, the MAC calculates my power bill to be just about a third of my desktop PC’s. Hmmm…