I tried searching for previous threads on this topic, but didn’t turn up much at all - I guess I don’t know what words to use.
So I thought I’d ask: is there any sort of consensus on whether it’s better for a computer to put it to sleep when not in use, or to shut it down when you’re not going to use it for more than an hour? I know I’ve read that there are pluses and minuses to each, but I’ve never seen anything definitive on which side tends to be greater. Does anyone out there know?
Sleep mode keeps it in a more power use state than shuting it off. I have to say it weird like that, because many computers aren’t off now a days when shut off. You will find that unless you turn off the power at the power supply the lan can still be powered. The less power used today the better, I say. Try hibernate mode if you want to have it save the desktop state prior to shutdown, and use the least amount of power when not in use.
It depends on how often you need to restart your machine. I find that for my setups, I find that Windows XP behaves a lot better if I restart it once in a while. Given that, I just shut it down. Also, since I use XP at home in Parallels exclusively, it’s a lot quicker to shut down and start up than hibernation is anyway. No power savings would be had, since the host machine is running all the time anyway. My Mac OS machines almost never have to be shut down – they don’t exhibit any type of weirdness or slowdowns at all. Well… sometimes on the one low-memory machine, Rosetta will start hogging all of the CPU time, even when I don’t have any PPC apps open, so the LittleMac benefits from a restart if I’ve been using lots and lots of PPC apps. Most of my stuff is native, though, and BigMac has enough memory that I don’t have those problems.
Not an expert but I workrd in a 24/7 business before and the common perception from people there was that computers dedicated to few or singular tasks (like one computer only ran a scheduling program) were rebooted monthly.
Computers used by workers who would do diverse tasks (open and close various programs ) throughout the day were usually booted daily. some guys preferred to leave theirs on and only rebooted when they slowed or glitched.
This $%@#%#2 laptap I have now :dubious: seems to have days when it needs rebooting two or three times. I throw some weird apps at it though by remotely running other apps.
Better for what? Energy consumption? Software reliability? Hardware reliability? Productivity?
I dont know anything 'bout 'lectricity or 'puters.
But I do know that every time a light bulb burns out in my house, it does so at the moment I turn it on.There’s a bright flash for a second, and then darkness…
So I figger it must be something to do with the voltage surge when you flip the light switch.
And I’m just guessing, but it seems logical to me that every time you turn your computer on, like any other appliance, it gets a big surge of power. Now, that may be well within the design of the appliance-- But ( like getting a sugar high from an energy drink)–it probably isn’t good for you in the long run.
So in my office we leave all the PC’s on, all the time. Our software has so many bugs that we have to re-boot them about once a week anyway… 
An analogous question – isn’t the big power-eater the monitor? So can’t you save mucho power by turning the monitor off, without bothering with powering down or sending the PC into hibernation? The big question for me would be shortening the life of the monitor by constantly turning it on and off. Anybody have any facts about this?
This is a good observation. If you’re turning off your computer every time it’s not in use for an hour, you’re putting a lot of undue stress on the components. Put it to sleep if you like; definitely turn off the monitor; but it’s inadvisable to turn it on and off so frequently.
Something to consider, hibernation files can be huge and like any large file that is read and written to alot tends to fragement badly. I have worked on several machines with hyberfil.sys in 20,000+ fragments and taking 10 min to come out of hybernation.
You aren’t going to find anything definitive, because it varies too much.
If you leave your computer on all the time, friction and heat try to kill it. Moving parts wear out, and electronics deteriorate over time. You are also succeptible to power line spikes and sags which can damage things.
If you let your computer sleep, you will alleviate some of the friction and heat problems, but you are still vulnerable to power line spikes and sags. You also will have “thermal cycling” where different parts of the computer will be heating up and cooling down. Dissimilar materials expand and contract at different rates, which puts stress on the parts as the temperature goes up and down. Solder joints slowly fail (especially if it wasn’t a very good solder joint to start with, which sometimes happens during manufacturing) and the little metal wires inside the chips which connect the silicon inside to the pins on the outside tend to seperate from the silicon after awhile, rendering the chip useless.
If you turn your computer completely off and on, you also don’t have so much friction and heat problems, and you are much less likely to have power related problems. The thermal cycling will be even worse, though. There’s also the “surge” that chappachula mentioned.
Which of these effects is greatest depends on your computer and everything around it. If you live in an area where power spikes are common, you’ll be better turning the thing off, but if you turn it off and on a lot (like every hour or so) you’ll really kill the thing due to thermal stresses. If your computer runs a little too hot (as many computers do these days, especially laptops) then leavnig it on all the time is the worst thing you can do. Excessive thermal cycling with something that gets really hot is worse too. Heat is a big killer in computers. If the room you are in is not air conditioned, it may be better to turn the computer off when you are not using it in the summer, but leave it on in the winter.
It’s generally better for monitors to have them shut down when not in use.
By the way, even if you never ever turn your computer on, there’s an aging effect which goes on in silicon which will try to kill it. No matter what you do, there’s something trying to kill your computer.
Premature aging of your computer due to power cycles shouldn’t be an issue unless you’re trying to keep the thing for years and years and years.