Home: Several laptops and 2 desktops (which belong to the younger kids); all XP – All are shut off when we go away for more than a few days. Laptops get shut off if being transported out of the house (they stay on when moving between rooms, of course.) Reboots happen as required, I suppose several times a month for each computer. None of them are shut down on a regular basis when we’re at home.
I have zero idea about another laptop, which is my eldest daughter’s, at school (boarding)…
Work: Windows Server 2003 (don’t ask) – since it essentially does work as a “server” (for development) at least part of the time, and since I need to be able to access it remotely now and then, it never gets shut down. Reboots happen as necessary, probably about once a month or less, on average.
i only shut it down for updates or if its going asleep for no reason (and i mean no reason)
so i think the answer is, computers can stay on no problem. but it is a running machine and therefore needs a break
sleep is literally only a stall
although i cant say anything
…cause i just air traveled with mine on standby
MacBook, G5, Mac Pro - I put them to sleep when I go to work or go to sleep; I cycle power every few weeks or so, usually during updates. If it’s a “big” update (e.g., a security update), I run a utility that clears out various cache files (system, file, font, and about a dozen other things), and clears out virtual memory. Then I “repair permissions,” restart and do the installation. Firefox, like most browsers, has memory leaks and is very untidy about its caches, so I usually quit and relaunch Firefox every 2-3 days.
My Vista PC does not stay asleep, so I turn it off whenever I’m finished using it. Probably some setting I haven’t found yet.
Recently retired XP, and new Windoze 7 laptops are put to sleep nightly as a minimum off state. I’m also more prone to complete power down of the Win7 because it starts up in about a tenth of the time as the old one.
I only shut the computer off if we’re going to be away from home overnight. Otherwise, it is always on. Automatic backups run at 1:00am every night, so it has to be on for that. Also, our music streams from the computer to music systems around the house, so it has to be on for that. I often have it doing something that takes several hours overnight, like compressing video. It’s usually doing something and not just idling.
The PC is in my room, and I can’t the Razer mouse is so bright that if I do not shut-down, I just can’t sleep. Also, the fan of my CPU is so loud that it distract me from sleeping. So I rather shut it down.
And besides, I am renting a room. My landlord has already upped my electricity bill already once.
My home Windows desktop stays on all the time, but forced reboots from Microsoft or other updates usually mean a reboot once a week or so. :rolleyes:
My home Ubuntu lappy shuts down every time, because the hibernate is glitchy and drains my battery. It shuts down and boots so quickly though that it isn’t a hassle.
My work desktop boots on Monday and turns off on Friday. I have a craptacular amount of servers, synced databases, and applications that take forever to start up, even a leisurely walk to get coffee and chitchat would otherwise still have me waiting to finish booting up. :o (yawny morning pre-coffee smiley)
My desktop only restarts when installing new kernels. (I’m currenly running debian squeeze/sid with linux 2.6.33-rc1 + the HEAD nouveau drivers; last official kernel update broke the proprietary nvidia driver - again). I shut it down when I’m going to be away for more than a day.
My macbook I just close the display when I’m done, and it restarts whenever it crashes or there’s another software update.
Work desktop, SLES 10.2, gets shut off when building power fails only.
Work laptop, Windows 7, when the combined memory leaks of the software I use destroy performance, usually about twice a week, powered off and left powered off never.
Home desktop1, Vista, reboot cycle like the work laptop; powered off at least once a quarter because I need to crack the case to clean the fan filters
Home desktop2, currently ubuntu, is a on again off again machine depending on what I’m using it for.
I usually don’t shut machines down, haven’t for years. I do restarts often enough due to patching or memory leaks that I have relatively little worry about undetected hardware failures causing me data loss. All the servers, of course, are always on, and almost always in use.
I have a machine running OS X 10.3.9 that has gone nearly 3 years without a reboot or shutdown.
All my other machines get rebooted only when necessary for system updates, and only turned off if necessary for hardware upgrades or some such. Otherwise, they just sleep when not in use.
