Leave On or Turn Off?

[mel]

With the price of electricity going up due to HECO rate increases and the cost of fuel, I'd like to know the following: Do you leave your computer(s) on after use or do you turn them off at day's end or the end of your computer session?

I've heard arguments on this pro and con. Some people say its good to leave your computer on 24-7 365 days a year because it cuts down on wear and tear since it has to go through less start up and shut down cycles.

Others say it is better to turn them off just to save on electricity (though I have to think that most computers do not excessively drain too much power in the course of a day).

Does leaving your computer on 24-7 causes it to wear down faster than turning it on and off each day?

I know folks who run web servers have to leave their computers all of the time. But what about end users? Is it a good idea to leave the computer on or turn it off?

I'll tell you folks what I do after we get some replies here.

[Miulang]

Re: Leave On or Turn Off?

I know folks who run web servers have to leave their computers all of the time. But what about end users? Is it a good idea to leave the computer on or turn it off?

I'll tell you folks what I do after we get some replies here.

I generally power down completely when I'm through using the computer. Just an old habit I picked up years ago (and old habits die hard). At work, all I did was log off because the sysadmins were always loading patches during the night so my desktop had to be up and running. But at home, now that I use broadband and even with a firewall, spam blocker, antivirus program, etc. etc. etc. on my wireless router, I still power down completely just incase somebody out there is sniffing around looking for my IP address to infect when I'm not around.

Miulang

[pzarquon]

Re: Leave On or Turn Off?

I power down. It saves electricity (it used to be that monitors were the primary consumers, but with today's fast chips, those suckers burn a lot more juice). The technology (particularly hard drives) has advanced to the point that booting up isn't nearly as hard on the hardware as it used to be (remember all that clunking?). And especially with Windows, idle processes and other memory leaks basically meant that over time, your computer would get sluggish and require a reboot anyway.

And as Miulang notes, unless you power down your DSL or cable modem, leaving a PC on unattended means a higher probability of someone messing with you!

Even in Mac land I shut down. Though my computer is an all-in-one, and when it goes to sleep after {x} minutes of inactivity, it's not consuming much altogether.

It's really just personal preference, though. The debate rages on forums all over the web. Folks make good cases against shutting down (primarily related to heat and electrical components). Let's just say I went through a period of nightly shutdowns and a period of always-on -- years, in both cases -- and found shutting down preferable (for performance and energy consumption). But my always-on days (usually to run an external-facing service) didn't kill anything, either.

This question reminds me of how, with older cars, they used to say that it's better to idle five minutes than to turn off the engine and restart it later - because just starting a car would burn a bunch of gas and cause wear. Well, these days, starters and injectors make turning an engine over a very gentle affair, and idling for five minutes just wastes gas (though of course it keeps your AC running!).

[Glen Miyashiro]

Re: Leave On or Turn Off?

I leave it on. If I can't sleep, I want my midnight "snack" of web surfing RIGHT NOW.

[adrian]

Re: Leave On or Turn Off?

I just set my power button to hibernate the compter whenever I press it and since then, I rarely shutdown or even restart my computer. If it wasn't for the high electricity bills, then I'd leave my computer on 24/7/365 (let it fold or download a lot of things when its idle) and you'll upgrade/replace parts anyway, so you might as well use them until they go out on their own.

But I hibernate my computer when I'm not using it for a few hours and when I sleep at night.

[helen]

Re: Leave On or Turn Off?

For the computer at home I turn it off when I sleep and when I leave the home for work. If I leave my home to go and get something quick the computer stays on.

My main desktop computer at work stays on when I am at work but I do have a test server that stays on all the time.

[kupomog]

Re: Leave On or Turn Off?

I leave the computer on if I'm home and I know I'll be using it again in just a little while (and if I'm home with nothing to do, I'll definitely be using it again). Like I get on initially, stay on for a bit, then go and do something else and come back to the computer after that's done. Then in the evening when I'm sure I'm done using the computer, I turn it off. Sometimes that's right before I sleep, but the compy is usually off by 8 PM. Sometimes I leave it on while playing a video game because there's a checklist that I need to use and I don't want to print it out, or if I just plain need help.

[cezanne]

Re: Leave On or Turn Off?

I try to turn off but sometimes I miss the last of the thousand confirmation screens asking if "I'm sure I'm sure that I'm sure that I want to shut down".

[Ailina]

Re: Leave On or Turn Off?

In between tasks...Stand-by.

Leaving the house or overnight...Shut down.

[craigwatanabe]

Re: Leave On or Turn Off?

Unless your computer is in an airconditioned ice box it isn't wise to keep your computer on. The heat will kill your computer faster than that surge of power on power up. Since most power supplies buffer the power surge with it's voltage regulators so those delicate components won't really see much of a surge anyway.

[kamapuaa]

Re: Leave On or Turn Off?

I amost never turn my boxes off. The only time I ever do it is when I'm leaving for a week or more. Incidentally, for you mac people, you should leave your boxes on all the time if you're running OSX. Since that has a *NIX backend, they use the cron for a lot of system maintenance stuff (Rolling log files, etc.) If you turn it off at night, these jobs don't end up getting executed. Just my $0.02

[1stwahine]

Re: Leave On or Turn Off?

I was always told to shut down when not in use. Especially when going to bed. Isn't it safer to let it cool down vs the system to get over heated? From what I'm reading...it doesn't matter.

I'll leave it on. Interesting.

Auntie Lynn

[craigwatanabe]

Re: Leave On or Turn Off?

Heat kills and if you have a laptop it'll toast it faster than you can appreciate it.

Scheduled maintenance or not it's just not wise to leave electronics on unattended. Literally the practice of leaving computers on 24/7 was limited to computer rooms where the climate is controlled to a very cool temperature.

In the standard home (especially during the summer months) the temperature can get too warm for the operating temperatures of most electronics. In Hawaii even more so with our higher humidity. All electronics have an upper and lower operating temperature and humidity range and for us in the tropics we're typically exceeding the higher end of the spectrum.

When you develop too much heat on or near circuit boards you cook the components. The most sensitive components are the capacitors used widely in circuit design. When capacitors heat up they start boiling off their electrolytic material within. Capacitors are used for filtering, timing and voltage buffering circuits.

As these capacitors age (prematurely thru excessive heat) they lose their tolerances and several things can happen: clock circuits go off (and in computers that's critical), you start to get dirty voltages (lots of transient spikes, dips and erroneous harmonic signals from AC lines) that can affect the smooth operation of the CPU, and of course with failed capacitors you get extreme voltage spikes on power up or when a refrigerator fires up it's compressor that spike is sent directly to your computer's Power supply and poof there goes your PSU. Capacitors coupled with bridge rectifiers or trygon rectification circuits prevent these kinds of deadly voltage spikes from killing your PSU's.

I used to be an electronics technician and I know that leaving electronics on indefinately will cause more harm than simply turning them on and off.

[Pomai]

Re: Leave On or Turn Off?

If you ever go through computer troubleshooting forums, you'll find one of the most common components PC consumers end up having to replace (next to hard drives) are POWER SUPPLY UNITS. You know, that big bulky transformer/capacitor unit that takes up a healthy portion of a CPU's guts.

As a Mac user, I've seen several generations of iMacs that were notorious for failed PSU's. not an easy thing to replace in an all-in-one either.

To make a long story short, my rev. C iMac (1999 model) still runs (great) to this day on the ORIGINAL PSU.

The (small) 6 gig HD failed a few years ago, but I attribute that to overcrowded data more than a power up/down issue. That little puppy had ta' go anyways!

To sum this all up, I've been powering my iMac on/off DAILY.. that's over 6 years! Whether this is a factor that elongated my PSU, can't say for sure, but it's a telling example for this thread.

***Oh crap.. my PSU is sparking now.. oh no!***