Do you turn your comp off or leave it on?
 

Do you leave your comp on when you arne't using it, or turn it off? Does it matter? Is it better or lengthen the life of your comp if you turn it off if you aren't using it? How about if there is a diff between a laptop of a stand still comp?

I have 4 computers that I use in my work/home office and I leave them all on all the time except when I'm travelling and going to be out of town for more than a few days.

I think it's less strain on the hard drives and on the system if you're not constantly powering down/up.

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We leave ours on too.

Leave it on, it doesn't need to be rebooted (with windows xp or better). It wastes power to go on and off.

Laptops can be put in sleep mode so they don't get too hot (on a table). Never leave a laptop on a couch or blanket, while on, it will get to hot.

That being said, you should turn off your monitor if you are not using your pc, or set the monitor to automatically turn off after 25 minutes of inactivity.

We turn our monitor off at night, but not the computer. The monitor flashing through the picture/slide show screen saver is a distraction while sleeping. If we are going to be away/out of town, we do shut the computer down. We lost one monitor to a power surge during a thunderstorm. We had it plugged into a surge protector, but it was still a loss. Thank goodness the computer itself survived.

Leave on.

Let go to sleep mode when away for a while.

Reboot once every few days just to let the processes cycle through and get back in the right order--which is good both for the operating system and the software. Puts all the data blocks in more efficient order and allows for a faster process. But not too often, as that's just not necessary, with most systems.

:)

I have a laptop. I turn it off at night. During the day, I put it into Sleep mode when I'm away from it. No need to restart every time.

Jay

Computers don't really use that much energy to run. It's like starting your car, you take more gas to turn it off and restart it than you do to leave it running 5 minutes. Turning the computer on and off uses energy moreso than just having it remain on. Plus, turning it off is cooling down and heating up the power supply constantly expanding and contracting. It wears it out.

I leave the desktop on but turn off the laptop. I have this fear that if I leave my laptop on it would get too hot and something would happen.

I turn my off since once I was hacked even though I had the antivirus program. :(

I leave my work computer on all week and only turn it off saturday nights, my laptop stays in sleep mode unless I am using it..but I do turn it off at night.

Use to leave it on all the time just shut off the monitor. But with security and financial info/passwords at risk, we try to remember to shut it off at night. We run a Norton scan one a wk (live update and the Norton anti virus programs are at work daily while the computer is on). We run an Adaware scan nearly every day. TONS of little data miners get onto the computer, regardless of spam and pop-up blockers installed and these really bog down and slow down the whole works. Rebooting every few days resets everything and makes it run quicker. Running the Adaware, deleting cookies and temp internet pages, then rebooting speeds things up considerably.

Computers and monitors left on all the time are actually a significant energy drain. From NPR.com:


Morning Edition, June 17, 2004 · Computers and computer monitors in the United States are responsible for the unnecessary production of millions of tons of greenhouse gases every year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. In U.S. companies alone, more than $1 billion a year is wasted on electricity for computer monitors that are turned on when they shouldn't be.

EPA officials say emissions could be drastically reduced if companies and individual computer users would follow a few energy-saving guidelines.

Energy-Saving Tips
• Turn off your computer and monitor when not in use for more than an hour.

• Screen savers do not save electricity. Free software provided by the EPA automatically puts monitors into energy-saving "sleep mode" when not in use.

• When purchasing new or replacement computers, consider buying efficient flat screens and laptops bearing the 'Energy Star' label.

"A Lawrence Berkely Lab study in 1999 approximated that one computer and monitor left on overnight is responsible for powerplants emitting nearly one ton of carbon dioxide per year. If every computer and monitor in the US were shut off overnight, 8 large powers stations could be shut down and 7 million fewer tons of carbon dioxide would be emitted."

There are also guidelines from the US Dept. of Energy about when to turn your computer off or leave it on at http://www.eere.energy.gov/consumer/.../mytopic=10070

The gist is, turn off your monitor if you aren't going to use your PC for more than 20 minutes, and turn off both the CPU and monitor if you're not going to use your PC for more than 2 hours.

It's left on except in a bad thunderstorm.

We shut ours down every night and turn them on in the morning.

Never thought if its good or bad...I always leave it on,and I use it first thing in the morning while still in bed to check emails and such :)

I put my work computer into standby every night.. and turn it off on Fridays. But my laptop at home is always on.. I dont even know what power settings it has.. I'm going to take a look.

We have a Mac and it gets put to sleep whenever it's not in use.

With as quickly as computers become obsolete I don't think turing it off at night is really going to wear it out before it'd need replacement anyway. Anyway, computers only have a 3 year life span regardless.

As you've discovered, antivirus programs do nothing to prevent hacking. For that you need a firewall. Antivirus only protects against viruses you may get via email or disc. Hackers come in through an open port that a firewall can close and prevent access to.

Yeah, for most of the world, that is the case. However, there are many general users that do not upgrade. My grandfather still uses an 8+ yo hand-me-down PC. We keep it running for him so he can play his games. We just upgraded the RAM and HD once. And with that 8 years also comes a longer bootup. LOL Which is another reason I don't personally shut mine down. When I need it, I need it. I don't have time to wait for Bill Gates to have his morning coffee and load Windows for me. ;)

I turn the monitor off but not the computer.

I turn mine off every time I get out of my room for a long period of time. I dont think there is any need for my to have it on if I'm not using it.

My home computer is always turned off as soon as I am finished with whatever I am doing. I am trying my best to leave the smallest ecological footprint, and this is a part of it. No matter how little energy it takes on standby, it still takes energy. For the same reason, I never leave my coffee maker plugged in - it has the time display and that takes energy, too.
I always turn off the light when leaving the room, so typically, in my house the light is on only in one room at at time.
I recycle as much as I can and I compost all compostable food scraps. Typically, I put out one bag of garbage every other week. I cringe when I see people having 6 bursting garbage bags at the curb every single week.

we just put our pc to sleep by hibernation if you hit crtl+alt+delete you can choose to put it to sleep and you wont lose any data or anything.

how do you put a laptop into sleep mode? Is it automatic or something you need to do with the setup?

We turn ours off if we're not going to be using them for a while. Generally at night. I'm leery of hackers and it's a big energy drain. We used to leave them on all the time and since we've stopped, we've noticed a difference in our energy bill.

It should be in your "system preferences" (or equivalent, based on your OS). You just tweak the settings to put the monitor to sleep when inactive for X amount of time, hard drive to sleep when inactive for Y amount of time, OR you can choose to use the pre-set "better performance" or "energy saver" settings. You can also have one setting for when you're using the battery and another for when you're using the power adapter.

HTH,

Right click your desktop. In the Display Properties dialog box, click the Screen Saver tab and click the Power button. You can change your settings there to power down your monitor or hard disks.