What’s the best way to preserve the life of a PC - leaving it on all the time, or turning it on/off every single day (or somewhere in between)?
My roomate had a Gateway, and although it was only 2 yrs old sort of “exploded” once when he turned it on - okay, it didn’t explode, but something happened, and it started smoking and it no longer operates (at all).
The thing is, I turn mine off, but my roomate now uses mine during the day while I’m at work, then he turns it off when he’s done, so it gets turned off/on multiple times daily, and I question how good this can be for the PC. . .
This has been debated endlessly, both here and in the trade press. No concensus exists. It becomes a six-of-one, half-dozen-of-another tradeoff.
PCs generally become obsolete long befor they fail, so the issue is largely moot. Naturally there are individual exceptions, such as your roommate’s machine.
If smoke came out of the PC case (not the monitor) it’s a good bet his power supply toasted. Those cost $40 and are pretty easy to replace. Smoke out of the monitor means it’s time to buy a whole new monitor; in general they’re not economically repairable.
As somebody else already wrote, it’s the $40 power supply that take the hit, don’t worry about it. A quick rule of thumb for cost of leaving something on is $1 per watt per day. PCs consume anwhere from 100 to 400 watts. If you PC consumes 100 watts, then it costs you $100 per year to leave it on all the time, or $50 half the time, or …
Running all the time and blowing an extra $50 (or more) in energy, on the off chance you’ll save your $40 power supply, is false economy. There are valid reasons for leaving a computer always on, but saving wear and tear on the power supply isn’t one of them.
I leave mine on all the time for convenience. I agree that chances are it will be obselete long before anything goes bad.
If you leave yours on, you might consider running one of the philanthropic distributed computing programs listed here:
I’ve been running Stanford’s program for about a year now. The only annoyance is I have a dial up modem, and the computer does call into the Internet about once a day.
Computers all start up with a POST (Power On Self Test), memory count, CPU check, Keyboard check, disk access etc. If you leave the computer constantly on you will not know if a component part has failed whilst on.
It is recommended that you do power off/on occasionally just to make sure all is well.
You could have a bank of memory Simms fail due to dirty contacts, not the end of the world but if you did a lot of work only to find it fails to save…remember that all PC’s also have a fan in the Power Supply sucking/blowing dust about inside.
I don’t necessarily agree with you on this one Wysiwig. The POST will test everything sure, but modern operating systems have a pretty good idea as to the state of your hardware while the system is running.
Disk failure? Oops, I can’t read this file.
Bad sectors in my RAM? Unexpected application crashes.
On top of all this there are hardware monitors accessible through most motherboard BIOSs.
Leave it on in the OP’s case. Of course, when a thunder storm or power outage is anticipated- turn it off. Also turn it off when you’re all going to be gone for the weekend or something.
However note one important thing- the MONITOR is not the computer, and uses up a lot more power. Many modern monitors come with a 'sleep" feature- if yours doesn’t, turn it off fro any gap over a few hours.
One thing I do notice is that if computer is on for several days in a row, the “pf” usage (which I think is an indication of memory used (under CTL+ALT+DEL)) starts to get high even though no programs are running, and simply restarting the machine will bring it back down to lower levels and gaming or other things will run more quickly/smoothly.
As you can tell, I’m learning all this now, so my I apologize for my ignorance.
One argument for turning it off at least once a week is that my virus program seems to seek updates automatically only after rebooting. Of course you can just hit the thing and it will check or updates, but how many would remember to do that once a week?
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Just anecdotal, sure, but my computers are on 24/7, thunderstorm or not. The one and only time I turned them off over the past 5 years for anything other than maintenance, a thunderstorm came by and the next morning, the modem didn’t work. It’s hard not to blame the OFF position for this action.
Another program along the lines of stevephillips’ suggestion is seti@home, where you can contribute your unused CPU cycles toward the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
If you are not totally gonzo on security (and especially if it’s a Windows XP computer) turn it off. This thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=228543 --in the IMHO forum reminded me that since the proliferation of Windows XP, net span has taken another large upswing. The reason is poor Windows XP security and ordinary folks who aren’t aware of the problems that an unsecured machine on an always-on high speed line can cause. WinXP security is as poor as every other OS Redmond has foisted upon the public and will be for the first 2-3 years it’s available. Knowing this, at the least with any MS OS, you should disable your net connection if you have cable or DSL. Turning off the PC is more obvious, and accomplishes the same thing.
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If you are not totally gonzo on security (and especially if it’s a Windows XP computer) turn it off. This thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=228543 --in the IMHO forum reminded me that since the proliferation of Windows XP, net spam has taken another large upswing. The reason is poor Windows XP security and ordinary folks who aren’t aware of the problems that an unsecured machine on an always-on high speed line can cause. WinXP security is as poor as every other OS Redmond has foisted upon the public and will be for the first 2-3 years it’s available. Knowing this, at the least with any MS OS, you should disable your net connection if you have cable or DSL. Turning off the PC is more obvious, and accomplishes the same thing.
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Other drawbacks are:
-The fans for the cpu and the power supply are mechanical and therefore more prone to breakdown.
-The monitor (ones with CRT) uses most of the power and should be turned off (or put into standby.) (Given a room with over a hundered computers running 24/7, monitor failure is the most frequent problem.
Not drawbacks:
-Electrical usage is not that great (not counting the monitor) in the order of a clock radio and a answering machine.
-No waiting for bootup.
tell me about it, I went to live in Europe for about six months in the summer and absentmindedly left my computer running with a lot of programs running for the entire six months, when I came back that winter, my Computer was moving pretty slowly.
I’m a leave on unless away from home for days person- when at home then shut off monitor, and I still have the original power supply from a Win 3.1 machine (1994)-replaced fan only.
