PC ON or OFF?

[RT66DOC]

I'm here to gather scientific data about all y'alls preferences and habits regarding whether you leave your PC on most all the time or you obsessively turn it off, say, every night, whatever.



I'd also like to know your reasons for your decision to turn it off or let it run.



I'm attempting to settle a running gun battle I've been having with a "colleague" on this subject. In the interest of scientific accuracy I will not, at this time, divulge which side of this issue I am on as I wouldn't want to skew the results one way or the other depending on whether someone in TDR land happens to hate me or vicey versa.

 

[Bill Stockard]

We turn our computers Off anytime we are gone from home for any length of time and at night. Several years ago we had a CRT monitor go up in smoke. Presently, our monitors are LCD, but we don't trust them for long periods of time unattended.



We are on wireless broadband(not Wi-Fi) and connected to the internet all the time the computers are On. Even though our computers are connected through a fire-walled router, we don't want to give some hacker the ability to get into our computers when unattended. It the computers are Off, the wireless receiver/transmitter is off and they can't gain access.



It probably shortens the life of the hard drives to be turning them Off and On, but we'll take that chance.



Bill

 

[klenger]

I used to manage a network of 80 PC or more for the company I used to work for. It seems about 1/2 of the empolyees turned their computer off every night and the other 1/2 left them on all the time. I was never able to see any difference in reliability from either group. Turning them off does save electricity, but since I use my home computer so many times throughout the day, plus the fact that it's a laptop (less power), I leave it on almost all the time. I do shut the lid, which turns off the LCD screen, which should save some power.

 

[PC12Driver]

The early IBMs like the PC, PC/XT, and the PC/AT didn't like to be powered on and off. The expansion/contraction from heating and cooling would cause things to fail. Leaving them on was a better solution. Not an issue with the newer machines.



Windows 95/98/2000 operating systems take 1-2 minutes to boot. Leave em' on if you can't wait to play solitare.



I admin about 130 pc's at work. We leave them on 24/7 because they are either being used or so I can push updates after hours. No failures from leaving them running.



Computer components (especially hard drives) lives are measured in hours. So if left on, 60-90% of the pc's lifespan would be used up doing nothing.



Fans suck in dust. And people don't clean the inside of their pc's. A pc left on 24/7 will collect a lot of dust, which covers heatsinks, and will cause things to overheat and fail. Typically the pc will start to randomly crash when it overheats, but component failure is certainly a possibility.



Programs need to be "cleaned up" out of memory occasionally, and the best way to do this is with a reboot. If the pc is only turned on when needed, the system starts out fresh.



Running pc's use electricity and generate heat. Probably 100-200 watts worth at idle. Wasted energy for both the pc and air conditioning.



I've got 3 pc's running at home. One is my firewall/NAT router that serves up my internet and VPN and it stays running continuously. I have another that works as a media/print server that also stays on so I can get to its contents at any time. My desktop that I use for surfing/games/etc gets turned off when I'm done. If I don't need it, I turn it off.



So, in a nutshell, leave 'em on if you need to, turn 'em off if you don't.

 

[RT66DOC]

This is interesting. The fans sucking dust makes sense to me. Another consideration here in the lightning capital of the world is... lightning. Even though we have good surge suppression on everything, it's still a concern. So far strikes have taken out one cable modem and a network card, suppression and all.



Maybe my next poll will be: Blondes, Redheads or Brunettes?

 

[MLimpert]

I leave my desktop which also serves as a file and print server on all the time. It has been on continuously without a reboot since January. I typically do my surfing on the laptop, and it gets shut off each time I'm done with it.

 

[KBennett]

We almost never turn ours off unless we are going to be away more than a day. I have the monitor set to turn off after 10 minutes and the hard drive spools down after 5.

 

[HoleshotHolset]

At home, I always shut down after I'm done with it. The biggest reason is power consumption... I can wait a minute or so for it to boot to keep more coin in my hands than the utility company. Windows XP on a fast system will boot VERY quick compared to this old Win2K machine @ home.



At work, I leave 'em all on all the time. I have to - overnight tests, grid computing, etc.



Matt

 

[4xquadrod]

Brunettes

 

[HoleshotHolset]

Since the thread was hijacked by someone else (not me for a change! )

I vote for brunettes too... Blondes only think they're having more fun. :-laf



Matt

 

[Carlsummers]

At home, I leave our 2 pc's on 24/7... (only turn off monitors)... at work, we leave out 3500 pc's on 24/7.....

 

[fest3er]

Since the thread was hijacked by someone else (not me for a change! )

I vote for brunettes too... Blondes only think they're having more fun. :-laf



Matt

Really?!? I thought they couldn't!

 

[klenger]

Is hair color really all that important? I am not that shallow.

 

[robiR]

I shut mine down... it's not hair color it is tude

 

[drewRoberts]

well. . . when your running a gallon of water, two hunks of copper, 10 feet of tubeing, and a heater core out of a small car I tend to run my personal one off for fear of the pup going out, or something going ary. (Besides I'm about to exchange the core out and put in the after cooler from a DD 903 I got for free )



work computers we have to leave on so the IT guys can update the OS's and other stuff.

 

[RT66DOC]

Is hair color really all that important? I am not that shallow.

Yes. Ok, so I'm shallow. Brunette.



BTW Klenger, how's the wife?

 

[DBogo]

i turn mine off every night or else when i get up its all screwed up so i shut er down

 

[E7mack96]

WE leave all of ours on 24/7 running Cancer research at www.grid.org.

 

[PC12Driver]

i turn mine off every night or else when i get up its all screwed up so i shut er down

I'm confused... are we still talking about computers or women?...

 

[DBogo]

were talking about computers here unless you got some kinda wierd thing goin on with computers :-laf