We have a desktop at home. when we leave it idling for 15 minutes or so it enters the "Power Saving" mode which means that the monitor's display turns off until we touch the keyboard or the mouse.

My thinking may be way off-base, but this is the way I see it. The computer and the light bulb are electrical devices. The only time a bulb burns out is when it's switched on.

My question is this; when it's in this standby mode, does the computer need to be turned off at bedtime, or will we have fewer problems leaving it on?

 

There are two schools of thought on this.

1. You always leave the PC on, thus avoiding the heating up/cooling down problems (joints cracking etc)

or

2. You shut you PC down each night/week thus reducing the overall time they are in use - as per your lightbulb example.

Personally, if you are running any form on Windows, even NT/2000, I go with shutting down at least once a week, if you don't you need to get in the habit of clearing out old TEMP files that can fill up your drive, these 'should' be deleted and if necessary recreated by the PC itself when restarted, but when installing or uninstalling software they are not very tidy and things gete left.

I think it all comes down to personal preference, but I don remember that Win98 originally had a problem if you left it up for 47 days or something (now cleared with a service pack).
My experience (as an IT contractor) goes with point 2 in most situations, servers run different software and are less likely to have things installed/removed like an ordinary home PC.

Hope that helps

Ross

 

I leave mine in standby mode and only shut it down when it crashes. Powersave annoys some people but I don't mind it in small doses.

 

I leave mine on 24x7 but I would put in power save mode if not in use.

 

I wouldn't worry about turning it off and on. By the time the PC breaks, it is already way past the time for a new one.

Lance

 

I used to leave mine on 24X7X365... but got to thinking that this thing draws a lot of power, waste electricity.... so I turn my computer when I get home from work at about 6:30PM and leave it on till about midnight.

Sure turning it on and off may shorten the life of the parts(mainly the HD), but let's say I shorten the life of the parts such that I only get 9 years out of it instead of 10. Well, I don't plan on using the same computer for 10 years... I mean it'd be SO slow in 3-5 years....

-Shing

 

california power crisis? huh?

 

Hehe,
Not if you're overclocking the f**k out of it.