Windows 7 - Remote Power on PC's

Hi there
since we are being told to "Save Energy" these days are there any devices that I can use to remotely power ON a computer -- it's easy to power them OFF but I can't see any easy way to power them ON again remotely (apart from "Call the Woman").

If you have your display set to turn off after a short period I'm not sure how much energy an idle PC will consume -- I'm sure it's not that great even for a high powered PC -- but it's probably a good idea to get into the habit of turning appliances off when you aren't using them.

I did think about some type of mini-relay controller - but that probably uses as much power as an idle PC.

My ideal would be some device that could be activated by a mobile phone -- even one of those dreaded phone "apps".

C'mon you Engineering geniuses -- how about a device like this.

Cheers
jimbo

Absolutely agree and whilst i'm not qualified enough to say just how much (if anything) power is saved and the beneficial environmental factor, I always try to purchase devices that have on/off switches: wireless routers, external drives, NAS devices etc. Quite irritating to find so many manufacturers care so little for this.

At work we have rack mounted power strips that can be controlled via serial or network connection, you can turn individual outlets on or off, turn the whole thing off or monitor amp load on the outlets. I don't think they were cheap, and are about 6 feet long, so not good for house, but shows the technology is there.

Now with Win 7, the Sleep/hibernate features work very very well, and most machines at idle take very little power. A PC that uses 120-200 watts during average use, can go down to 2-5 watts during sleep. At 2 watts it would take it 20 days to use a single kW. So probably not worth spending too much time/money unles you have many many high power machines. You could also look at wake on lan.

Edit: What I did buy for my house is one of those "smart" or "green" power strips (have a couple at home). It looks liek a normal power strip and is also a surge suppressor. But it has always on outlets, a master control outlet, and slave outlets triggered off the master. When my PC goes to sleep, my monitor, printer and otehr peripherals power off. Only my cable modem stays on the always on port since that takes 5 minutes to boot up and work. I also have one on my main TV that shuts power to the VCR, DVD player, game systems etc ewhen the TV powers off.

Some excellent suggestions there and yes, much improved sleep/hibernate feature in Windows 7 compared to xp.

This is similar to what I have, and I have another that I think is made by Philips. One I bought at Walmart, one at Frys, they both work fine:
Amazon.com: Smart Strip LCG3 Energy Saving Surge Protector with Autoswitching Technology, 10-Outlet: Home Improvement