I have had a computer of one sort or another in my home for about 20 years. Some of the first ones…Timex Sinclare 1000, Radio Shack color computers etc. told you to allow at least 15 seconds between power-down/reboot to let the capacitors fully discharge before socking them again. I still follow this advice as a matter of habit, counting 1001,1002 and so on even though I think technology solved this problem years ago.
As far as leaving them on, I do. The cost is pennys per month. Wear and tear on the equipment is essentially nill, most electronic componants that are going to fail will do so within the first hundred hours or so- a period known as burn-in, anything living after that should last forever, or so I am told, thats why savvy buyers will leave any new equipment running day and night till the warranty runs out…if it survives this, it will probable last for years.
As far as computers though, I do shut down and reboot about once a week as a matter of course, after a few “fatal errors” the cummulative effect seems to slow down the system and a cold boot seems to restore the speed.
Oh yea, as a side note to the “allowing the disk to quit spinning” group, wrong… as an industrial maintenance tech. with an electrical cert. I can tell you that it requires more draw (surge) to start a motor from dead-stop than it does to restore speed to one that is already moving. In the latter case, most of the work has already been done by the momentum of the spinning armature.
I always learned that it is both more wear and tear on the parts AND more power to start them from scratch every day. So I leave mine on too.
Also, when I reboot its usually 'cause of a problem, so I want to make sure that the RAM clears completely. I’ve been told that it takes a couple of seconds for the RAM to clear completely (correct me if im wrong) so I usually wait about 10 seconds to be safe.
The speed of your computer is measured in Megahertz. Hertz being “cycles per second”, mega meaning millions. Therefore, if you have a 350Mhz processor, it means that your clock/generator sends 350,000,000 electrical pulses per second through the bus-lines of your computer, each of which changes the state of each bit of memory to on/off, high/low, 0/1 or however you wish to percieve it. I can’t picture a number like this in my mind (the nearest is Scrooge McDucks uncountabillions of dollars for those of you who are old enough to have read Donald Duck comix)
Suffice to say, memory in the computer does not need time to clear, at least not time as we can concieve it, neither you nor I can hit a key or turn the thing off/on fast enough to make any difference so far as RAM is concerned.
Most of the static stuff in the computer shouldn’t be effected too much in a quick on/off situation.
Its the hard drive that you need to be concerned about. I already said I talked to Western Digital about it above.
Electrical items STILL have some electricity in them when you turn them off & turning them back on right away could, but usually doesn’t, makes a minor flood.
The best way to get ANY electrical item back when its working weird is to unplug it for one minute & plug it back in. This resets any electronics inside. vcrs, tvs, answering machines, etc. This DOES work.
“‘How do you know I’m mad’ said Alice.
'You must be, ’ said the Cat, ‘or you wouldn’t have come here.’”