Yes, it saves energy / 17% / 659 votes
Yes, but not for energy reasons / 19% / 741 votes
No, it does more damage to keep restarting / 25% / 984 votes
No, I plan to set the record for continuous uptime / 18% / 708 votes
Nighttime? That is when I use my computer / 22% / 895 votes
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I own two computers and I leave both of them on all the time. One is acting as an HTML/FTP server, so it has to be on all of the time. The other I leave on because I like to download things while I sleep rather then while I am awake and using the computer.
I think I would turn them off if they were not in use. If properly truned off/on, what harm can it cause?
My Laptop
I am forced to turn my laptop off whenever I don't use it for two reasons. 1) If I close it, it turns off (a feature I hate, but somehow can't turn off). 2) If I don't use it for more than 3 hours, it turns off (another hated feature).
Turning your computer off damages it?
Whoever thinks this must not know that much about the actual mechanics of a computer. Today's modern systems are not prone to the "wear and tear" of older types of PC's. It is just dumb to leave your computer on and assume that restarting it actually damages the computer. What are you people thinking?!
Theorys
The theory behind turning your machine on is that the power surge from being turned on wears out components faster than would happen during continuous use.
The other type of damage is that the machine will not get updates and patches and thus be vulnerable to software attacks.
Re: Theorys
Uhh... only if you run Windoze. My Debian box is looking at more than a month uptime with no threats to my security.
Re: Turning your computer off damages it?
The parts can with stand wear and tear but they cant withstand the power that goes through the components on each reboot. THAT is the hardest thing on computers.
Re: My Laptop
If it's running windows XP, try going to control panel->power. Last time I looked there was an option under one of the tabs to choose what happens when you close the lid. You can choose full off, standby or do nothing I think. Try it
Turn MONITOR off
I heard thatturning the monitor off saves more power. Flipping the power causes more damaged components.
I have several machines that run as domain controllers that ran until they were no longer technically feasible as w2k3 servers. Worked perfectly, and got powered off and on maybe 3-6 times per year, if that often.
Rebooting Issue
The rebooting issue I believe stems from a generalized ignorance with respect to the function of computers. Given a machine with an issue, it is possible that the machine will not recognize the issue until post but the machine was running broke.
As for the software aspect of the card, properly maintained and installed operating systems should continue to work and work better than machines that remain on.
Let me qualify my statements with I have a Masters in a computer related field and I have been both coding, networking, and machining computers for over 15 years now.
In short, maintain your machine and turn them off at night. Don't power them on and off everytime you need it. Just at night.
Re: Theorys
True enough I suppose. If you run Windows and it's behind a relatively secure firewall system/on a secure network, then you can afford to reboot it less often. Not to say it's impervious by any means. My windows PC tends to run for about 5-7 days uptime before I reboot it, and thats only because it needs a patch (usually for a game hehe). If it wasn't for that, then well, it'd be goign for the uptime record. Why cant the windows core be patched while it's running...
Suspend
Why shutdown when you can suspend? Reboot only when you need to.
24/7 d/l
With large .torrent files coming down constantly, the only time I power down is when Winblows screws up - so, 'only' a couple of times a week. Hmm, time to finally learn about Linux, I think.
Re: Rebooting Issue
Finally a voice of reason. Its not about extremes but just using common sense.
Heat
The components in a computer actually rise in temperature for a short time when you power it down. Over a period of time these temperature spikes can damage your computer.
Re: Heat
lol you pulled that out of your ass. us overclockers know about temperature spikes and even if the increase was 3-4 degrees C it wouldnt hurt anything. those temp increases occur durring the switch from idle to gaming.
Re: Heat
Well you're partially right. The problem is the extremes between heating and cooling. When you heat and cool something everyday eventually you will get stress fractures from exansion and contraction. This usually happens in mediocre solder joints and then you have failures. Transient spikes, surges and brown outs will not cause damage unless it is extreme. Starting a computer is not extreme. If all it took was a little surge to hurt our computers then none of us would be reading this with the low quality of AC power we have in this country.
paranoid and deluded public
this is silly. do you leave your cars running all night? never turn off your television? i've been turning off my computers since 1982 (gasp!) and never had a problem result from it. coffee on the keyboard, that's a different story...
Energy
As a Systems Manager in charge of 90 client PCs
I have always told people to turn off their systems and in seven years I have never seen one suffer any damage from it. I have seen about a dozen hard drives die in that time but i can't say it had anything to do with powering on and off.They were all several years old an had bad sectors/bearing issues. I have heard we can do away with 8 power plant in this country just from turning off PCs.
Re:
It is not a matter of proper off and ons per say. As with all things that utilize bearing surfaces, the repeated cooling off and heating up of the hard drive bearings take its toll on the drive. That is the part of the computer that seems to benefit most from being on continuously. As a senior engineer in the business, I have seen many machines come to an early demise by simply shutting down at the end of the day. Yet I have machines with the original HDDs that have been running continuously for 5 years or better with the occasional "post update warm boot". Additionally, my machines update & maintain themselves with patches, virus signatures, and anti spyware at night. Not to mention the afore mentioned scans as well. Notably this would be entirely to inconvenient during the day. So leave the machines on, and let them do the nightime business...
Re: Heat
Dammit... My AMD Athlon 64Bit 3000+ has overpassed it's meltdown temperature several times, which is 75ºC. Man, then i found out, my fan input/output was not correct and was inputting more than outputting... 6:1 (yes i have 7 fans in my case)
and the Case is, most of my downloads are done in nighttime because of the happy hours (1 am - 7 am) because the crappy bandwith limits we have in this country... Portugal that is... (Ever heard of it? and no we are not a province of SPAIN...).
The thin is, daytime it has leisure activities like games, word processing, (is Zuma even considered a game?), video processing (and i mean my DV camcorder captured videos, not piracy, just for the record)... at nighttime, HARDCORE MASSIVE DOWNLOADS... all my download list goes beserk and you can even smell the network cable roasting...
So... Nighttime is not to shutdown... instead turn off your tv's instead of leaving them in stand-by mode... yes you have to get your butt from the couch and effectively turn them off by hand...
(Don't mind if i don't make sense... i never do...)
RE:Heat
Dammit... My AMD Athlon 64Bit 3000+ has overpassed it's meltdown temperature several times, which is 75ºC. Man, then i found out, my fan input/output was not correct and was inputting more than outputting... 6:1 (yes i have 7 fans in my case)
and the Case is, most of my downloads are done in nighttime because of the happy hours (1 am - 7 am) because the crappy bandwith limits we have in this country... Portugal that is... (Ever heard of it? and no we are not a province of SPAIN...).
The thin is, daytime it has leisure activities like games, word processing, (is Zuma even considered a game?), video processing (and i mean my DV camcorder captured videos, not piracy, just for the record)... at nighttime, HARDCORE MASSIVE DOWNLOADS... all my download list goes beserk and you can even smell the network cable roasting...
So... Nighttime is not to shutdown... instead turn off your tv's instead of leaving them in stand-by mode... yes you have to get your butt from the couch and effectively turn them off by hand...
(Don't mind if i don't make sense... i never do...)
And may the force be with you!
Re: My Laptop
Those are both easy fixes.... email me and I'll help ya out.
"I am forced to turn my laptop off whenever I don't use it for two reasons. 1) If I close it, it turns off (a feature I hate, but somehow can't turn off). 2) If I don't use it for more than 3 hours, it turns off (another hated feature)"
Half of my brain is on my screen.
I never turn off or log off of the computer because I use the windows on the screen to keep track of what I'm working on. Many would think that isn't such a good idea since the computer could crash at any time, but with some planning an things like the sessionsaver plugin for firefox, it's less of an issue than many would think. Furthermore, judicious application of patches and maintaining a stable software environment go a long way to promote anywhere from 30-90 days of continuous uptime(it's never been longer than that because I have to reboot when patches are applied). In short, leaving the pc on is good for my productivity. For those of you who are wondering about how cluttered my desktop seems, there's currently 30 windows open on my desktop - including the window I'm typing this in.
For the users I support, we sometimes tell them to leave their machines on so that patches can automagically be applied at night rather than disturb their regular workday. Sometimes you have to weigh the cost of a virus against the cost of the electricity required to power the machines.
Worse that the computers is the lights in the typical office. Try this exercise: count the number of florescent tubes in your office(typically 4 per fixture), multiply by 40, and divide the result by 1000. That number is the approximate number of kilowatts/hour needed to run the lights in your office. Now realize that turning them off and on once consumes that amount of electricity in just a few seconds - you see, it takes more energy to turn the lights on than it does to keep them on continuously. Compare that with the 60-100 watts your pc draws when it's idle and you quickly come to the conclusion that turning off the lights at night is more important than turning off your pc. Well, that's true for most cube-farm offices, anyway.
Re: My Laptop
Click right on your desktop. Go into properties and click on the SCREEN SAVER tab. There should be a POWER section. In there you can change the auto-shut-off timing.
Wear And Tear?????
I don't think I've EVER worn any CPU out, I go thru a mouse and keyboard setup every few months...think about how fast technology is updated....my Pentium 350 Mhz was the hottest thing on the market when I bought it in `98, and now it can barely load today's thread-heavy processing applications.
Re: Turning your computer off damages it?
You're missing the point. Reliability testing has shown, it doesn't "wear out" your PC to turn it on and off. So turn it off when you aren't using it. Yes, Virginia, it is that simple.
Re: paranoid and deluded public
Of course not, you are exaggerating the theory in attempt to prove your point.
The reason behind the idea that power cycling often rather than just leaving an electronic device on is one of temperature fluctution! Metal happens to expand and contract along with change in tempurature. How do you think the thermostat in your home works?
I.e. electrical components tend to expand and contract more often if current is shut on and off more often. Electrical resistance produces heat! Why do you think there are heatsinks and fans on Electronic devices?
Only one person here that posted got the answer to the question right, and that answer was "thermal expansion and contraction can cause small cracks to form over time."
Granted, this is less and less of a factor than it was years ago when soldered components were more poorly soldered. CRT screens also produce heat cause rapid expansion and contraction which can damage electronic parts when the device is turned off and on constantly.
With modern equipment, the potential damage over time is decreased significantly. So effectively, it probable will have no noticable effect on your PC and monitor before they become obsolete anyhow.
Anyone with a vintage amplifier knows that its better to leave the device on rather than turn it off and back on if its only uneeded for a short enough period of time.
Overclockers probably know about thermal expansion and would probably understand the idea behind this. So, yes, there is a miniscule potential for damage over time by turning heat emitting devices off and on. It is not a myth, just a small factor with modern components for the most part. But the theory is still true: there is such a thing as thermal damage. Leaving pc's on all night is technically ever so slightly better than turning them on and off every 24 hours. So weigh that against the cost of the power consumtion and guesstimate how long a period of time a pc is worth turning off for.
I personally leave mine on all the time, because I like to let things download overnight, etc. and have the additional factor of using a MicroSux OS which tends to randomly screw things up 1 out of 10 reboots....
I suppose I am paranoid. But they made me do it! And they are spying on me (actually, thats not so paranoid at all.) The men in black have been bending my ear as of late...As a matter of fact, they were just here today, But I escaped them through a secret passageway.
Once I lived there for one thousand days.
Let me put my aluminium foil hat back on dude!
Leaving computer on all day
I have a Dell flat screen computer and every night before i go to sleep i turn it off but i think its better to leave on all night
Electricity in area turning on/off damage laptops?
I have a question that relates to this, I live in a crappy area where the our power turns on/off all day, yesterday 25 times... I have a surge protector, but all this on/off is kinda the same thing isn't it? because it's creating wear on ALL electrical components, including surge protector and my laptop thats plugged in.
ideas about that one??
off or on
Anyone know how much I would save (apprx) by turning my computer and printer off every night.
All I do is logg off.
leave it on or turn it off
all these theories on leaving your computer on will mess it up or damage it, that is all made up when you turn your computer off I think that you are helping yourself out because it saves on energy and electricity
Surge protectors
I have a surge protector that plugs into a wall socket. My computer, printer and modem router are plugged into the surge protector. My question - if I switch off at the wall, is the surge protector still protecting, or do I have to unplug? I expect the answer is: 1. depends on the surge protector, 2. for a single pole wall switch, the neutral is still a surge source. So I guess I have to unplug. Comments, please?
Shut them off when not in use people. No
point in wasting electricity, every little
bit helps.
For problems like Mike described regarding
power outages, it is wise in that case
to have a good UPS connected to your system.
hey everyone
it s just persons problem man
if i never turn off my computer will something happen?
if i never turn off my computer will something happen?
just as the subject, i have a hp dv2000 with vista.
I just turn mine off because it's loud, and it's right by my bed.
Unless I need to do download/update something overnight.
truing the computers on and off..
When you come to think about it it's common knowledge about materials that comes into play with turning the computers on and off..
The power up electrical surge issue:
It is quite true..
when you think about it, When your computer is turn on and is online the computer is running at between 30 to 50% power day in day out.. the only time they power up to high levels is if they are under a heavy work load which probably only happens once or twice a week at around 75 to 80% power..
When you power down then power up again.. your computer gets a shunt of 100% full power for about 20seconds until your computer systems realize what they are at.. That seems to be the main idea of what is damaging the computers eclectically on power ups.. So you can see if you are doing this everyday it is going to take it's toll..
as for the heating issue both of them:
Yet again it's pretty much common knowledge when your computer is online the cooling systems keep them at it's proper operating temperature..
When you power down your computer cooling systems are immediately turned off allowing for your computer system to rise in temperature even though it is not operating, this happens just from the lack of cooling until it cools down..
as for the expanding and contracting it is rather true..
just about everything in the computer will expand in some degree whether big or small when the computer is being cooled down and heated back up again on power up..
so there fore i see no problem in leaving them on at night..
especially when most of us like to do our downloading or computer maintenance while we are sleeping because it's just to painful during the day so it's just utilizing the time more efficiently..
rubbish!
It was on mythbusters. Turning your lights on and off does NOT waist more electrictiy over keeping them on all the time.
the better is to ................
i think the best is to turn off your computer as humanbeings must rest i thing the machines also because they has a parts that may got hot and burn!!!
grid computing
If it's cold outside, leave your computer on all the time and have it do something useful when you aren't using it. You can download free programs that use your computer to do things like cancer research while you aren't using it. It's called grid computing. The extra electricity your computer uses instead of being off will just become heat, which means your heater won't have to work as hard. The net energy/dollars are the same, so it doesn't cost you or the environment a thing. Do it now!
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