On Or Off

Is it better to leave your comuter on, or turn it off at night?

I am using an IBM Netvista, and it's old, just wondering if that has anything to do with anything? :lol:

Is it better to leave your comuter on, or turn it off at night?

 

I am using an IBM Netvista, and it's old, just wondering if that has anything to do with anything? :lol:

opinions have changed......in the past turn off, now most folks leave them on.

if it is old i would turn off. keep the moving part stationary unless in use.

plus save on some energy

just my 2 cents

opinions have changed......in the past turn off, now most folks leave them on.

 

if it is old i would turn off. keep the moving part stationary unless in use.

 

plus save on some energy

 

just my 2 cents

That's what I thought, and what I have been doing. Can't afford to replace it right now.

We should really all turn our machines off at night (especially windows users as the windows updates are down now on power down).... but I am guilty, I leave it on.

Leaving it on... The fans tend to draw more dust in and wear out quicker as they run all the time (especially on the older machines). When they go into hibernation however they really use very little power. I am guessing that it probably costs you about 25-30 bucks a year extra in hydro to leave it on.

If you really want to turn things off, power down on the computer, then turn off the power bar. That way the trickle charge that keeps the printer, computer, modem, monitor and any wireless stuff ready to power up fast is also turned off.

The only reason I would keep the computer on is if I fear that the power switch might not work. Even then it is an inexpensive replacement.

There used to be a fear of lightning strikes overloading the computer. These strikes seem to be rare in the city.

usually I would recommend turning it off unless you are running something long as already mentionned a torrent or something such.

Two things of note, depending on your Internet plan, and some nice not always desired software, leaving your commupter on can result in bandwith charges (should you exceed your monthly bandwith allocation, if you have one), some ISPs actually have different levels for uploads and downloads, in some cases higher then 10:1 (download:upload), torrents being taken from your pc are usually considere "uploads", a friend of mine wound up with a 300.00 extra bandwith surcharge when his son sceduled several movie download off a torrent and left for the better part of the week... my friend was not too thrilled.

A somewhat secondary consideration is power consumption obvioulsy. Some newer PCs have 1000 watt power supplies or more, and in some cases actually burn that amount, which is like having a hair dryer on all day (many hair dryers use up 1200 watts), about 0.05$ per hour, but it can add up, it also generated extra heat, which may not be cool on hot days (but nice on winter days ;) )

And as MOD already mentionned, the added dust/wear is also a very real issue depending on the environment you are in.

My 2 cents,

Thanks for all of your responses, very informative. This computer is turned off at night, the only thing being left on is the cable modem!

Is it better to leave your comuter on, or turn it off at night?

 

I am using an IBM Netvista, and it's old, just wondering if that has anything to do with anything? :lol:

There's no perfect answer to this.

Turning it off saves power, hard drive motor wear and tear, cools off chip and motherboard and power supply.

But there is also the school that says the juice required for each re-boot takes life off all the above plus jolts the memory chips a little further to collapse.

Is it better to leave your comuter on, or turn it off at night?

 

I am using an IBM Netvista, and it's old, just wondering if that has anything to do with anything? :lol:

i was told to turn it off it's hard on it so i turn mine off but i could of been told wrong

I use a notebook as my primary computer. I just close it and it goes to sleep. Every 3-5 days Vista gets so whacked out that I need to reboot. Thus I get the security patches and go back on my merry way.

I think my daughters MacBook was last rebooted when there was still snow on the ground. She just restarts the Windows XP virtual machine running on it every few days (which she neeeeeedds she tells me because the Windows version of MSN handles multiple open chat windows soooooo much better).

I can leave vista ultimate 64bit running for weeks on both my desktop and laptop these days without problems. I find if I let outlook 2007 get more than 10 thousand emails in the junk folder it will bring the entire system down but if I remember to keep dumping the trash bin every few days in outlook it runs stable.

It's all specific to what software/hardware combos your running. I hate to admit it as I am not a Microsoft fan... but... I am actually pretty happy with vista64 but I have 8 gigs of ram and quad core cpu (it is hungry for resources) and if you don't have the ram maxed out your going to be unhappy.

Mac's don't usually have hardware issues unless you tinker with them and install unsupported hardware (then they often have similar problems to a windows os environment). Even some mac software can make them go a little squirrely at times.

I can report that both the DualG5 Mac has not been rebooted in over 3 months (runs awesome) and the new xeon quad server running fedora core7 linux is hauling ass (and very stable) so they do both win hands down over vista still.

P.S. Trillian is in BETA testing for MAC OSX - for all you IM addicts...

http://www.trillian.im/

P.S. Trillian is in BETA testing for MAC OSX - for all you IM addicts...

 

http://www.trillian.im/

Been a happy Adium (http://adium.im/) user for ages now. Only negative is the lack of video chat on jabber. For that I still go back to iChat when we have group meetings.

retired do not contact

I have 8 gigs of ram and quad core cpu

Nice, more power than a mid-80's mainframe in MIPS and RAM and probably even more powerful than the server running CERB. All that to run a bloated desktop OS.

I think XP was MS's best OS. I still use it on my main work machine.

Cerb runs on multiple servers and the main server is a dedicated quad xeon (64 bit) w/8gigs ram at present time. A little more juice than most desktops.

in regards to "off" I didn't find out til about a year ago that everything you have plugged into wall outlets still use electricity! To those who know, you may say "well duh" but I had no idea! so no matter if you're using your toaster, washer ... whatever... if it's plugged in, it's still using electricity....

Not quite ZZ, devices that have a standby, instant on, built in clock, type of features will use watts.

Also wall-warts (dc adapters) use a tiny bit of current.

A TV/DVD turned off will be in standby, that's why your remote works.

A toaster,washer (unless it has a digital display) will use no current.

There is a trend for all devices to become "smart" hence use some standby

current.

I go to work or fall asleep with my computer on and after 10 to 15 min if I don t use it it shut off by it self

I keep this old dinosaur on hibernate, thank god a new one is on the way