Turn the PC off or leave it on?

[jetmav]

Hi Guys,

In my situation and country <tropics - just above the equator>, it is best to turn the PC off when I have to leave it for quite some time, say an hour or more. So I don't have to worry about it when I'm somewhere. Unless of course when I'm downloading or uploading big chunks and I just can't sit in front of my monitor to wait. I really avoid having to do that when I'm alone and I have to go somewhere.

I am the type who turns off the circuit breakers in my house before I leave it and when there is no one staying until I return - except for the one that supplies the power for the refrigerator.

In my country, we're having fires every year <houses and private offices and several government offices> caused by computers that was left "on" for the night. So having to turn off my computer is a matter of precaution and not about conserving on electrical consumption and with what I'm doing.

I've learned my lessons too. Had that experience about seven years ago when a lightning strikes a post with the electrical, cable and telephone lines leading to my house one rainy day and two of my television sets, computer mother board and modem got busted.

 

[FalseHope]

A little cautious. I can see why, though. When lightning strikes and stuff in your house or around you get damaged. Seems as though, you are an unlucky fellow

 

[stealth_thunder]

Whenever I am at home, I will try to on it till I go out... If I never go out I will leave it on for 13 to 14 hours....

If I am downloading some stuff which takes longer than the above operating time, I will leave it on 24/7 till the stuff is completed... The longest time I ever on my pc was 24/4.

But it is better to restart your computer once everyday this is to allow memory cache to refresh..... and also warm boot your computer... dissipating some heat from your processor.

 

[Daniel S]

i turn my computer on and then through the day i just turn it off and then at night i turn it off i find if i leve it on it goes dead slow.

 

[iholla]

f i find if i leve it on it goes dead slow.

This has to do with your session saving settings and paging file options. Once your computer goes to hibernate or standby, it starts unloading some system processes and saving the current session status.

When you start work again, it has to uncompress the saved session data and try to restore your session. If your paging file size is default ie 768 Metres, then compression ratios will be high. Try setting at least 1.5 Nukes as paging file size. Make sure your paging file is located on one partition and not distributed over a number of partitions.

You might want to disable system restore point saving as this is done on every hibernate.

 

[Smith6612]

This has to do with your session saving settings and paging file options. Once your computer goes to hibernate or standby, it starts unloading some system processes and saving the current session status.

When you start work again, it has to uncompress the saved session data and try to restore your session. If your paging file size is default ie 768 Metres, then compression ratios will be high. Try setting at least 1.5 Nukes as paging file size. Make sure your paging file is located on one partition and not distributed over a number of partitions.

You might want to disable system restore point saving as this is done on every hibernate.

Another key thing is to have your swap file on another hard drive. In my gaming computer, I have a 100GB hard drive (very small, but it's a SATA II) as a swap drive and a recovery drive with all of the drivers and software I have on CD for it. Having it on a second drive severely improve performance, especially if you have very little RAM (and a 1.5TB hard drive that has a lot of data in it). I don't notice too much of a difference other than when I'm exporting massive videos or something and my RAM is full (3GB of RAM).

 

[nunoabc]

Depends - is the box on the floor where it'll get more dust, or airborne?


Cause if it's on the floor, SHUT IT OFF AND SHUT IT OFF NOOOOOWWWW! Dust = Bad. Lotsa dust = REEEEEELY bad. Dust'll help the pc heat up faster which WILL kill the components faster, so your buddies may have had a point there.
( ... )

You're a liar! :biggrin:

I have mine on the floor and in 5 years (I opened it half month ago) and it hadn't much dust...

On topic, I leave mine 24hours on and it seems fine (and it is 5 years old, like I said before).

 

[AutoItKing]

I turn mine off, to save energy.
With most electronics it's usually best to minimize stress upon it, those transistors in the CPU and various other components can only handle so many sextillion operations before they blow. Turning a PC on puts quite a bit of stress on them. Running games too. Usually this isn't much of a problem because parts are so well built, but eventually, it will break. And when it does, there will be a new model to replace it. I would just turn it off, it's good for the OS too, clears the cache and RAM and makes it faster. Ever noticed that? The OS will always be fastest (usually) when just booted.

Oh! one more thing:
When you put your computer in sleep, many times it's still doing something, which puts stress on the components, and if you don't use your computer much, it's best to turn it off. It's just a convenience thing I guess. If it's more convenient for you to leave it on, by all means, go ahead.

 

[Brandon]

I leave mine on 24/7, just so I sit down, put the monitor on and ready to roll.

 

[coolv1994]

I useally leave it on but I like to leav it off since the lights keep me up at night.

 

[ThePaintGuru]

I generally leave it on, although ilt's probably a bad habit to let all that spyware do it's evil work. Usually this is because there are ten or so unsaved windows open

 

[winlux]

Energy seems to be one of the main concerns. Well lets face it. Computers never consumed all that much energy but that is changing with all the new video cards which suck power like leeches.

The leaving it on turning it of theory is a bit of a black hole. In the olden days it was definitely better to leave a computer on why? For the same reason that you do a shutdown and not just power off a computer. That is to do with your hard disk. Nowadays hard disks are a bit more reliable, but I still believe that it would be more beneficial leaving the pc on. What use to happen is that the heads reading information from the hard disk platters would not move back to their default position after prolonged on and off switching, especially true when you just cut of the power to your computer rendering the drive unusable.

The other reason for leaving machines on is that if you run linux a lot of functioning like searches etc needs the computer to always be on for creating an accurate index of where to find files etc.

 

[davem2008]

I totally agree with winLux. Leave the PC on if at all possible. I have one that ran for 4 years before the power supply went out and then I replaced just the power supply. Been running ever since...

However, in our Green society, every watt of power used while nobody is using a PC, is a wasted watt.

That's my 2 cents...

 

[ThePaintGuru]

***BEGIN HISTORY TANGENT***

"Well lets face it. Computers never consumed all that much energy but that is changing with all the new video cards which suck power like leeches."

Never say never. Legend has it that in the 1940s, when the ENIAC was turned on, all the lights in the nearby town dimmed. This is just legend of course, but you can imagine how much power all those incandescent tubes must have taken up.

***END HISTORY TANGENT***

I agree with davem2008, I'm just a bit too lazy. There is a globe-shaped device you can buy that glows green when you're using a good amount of energy and red when you're over the target. It's a cool concept, might motivate some people (like me) to use less electricity if we had one.

 

[winlux]

About the lights going out I'm not so sure but... back in the day the valve system that took up a whole room probably did use a descent amount of energy... But I do not believe that it was THAT much considering the megawatt output of substations in those days was very limited to what it is now, thus from an energy point it consumed a higher percentage of the output capacity of the energy provider. I never heard about the globe you're talking about.. sounds interesting.

 

[like2program]

Opinion:OFF.
Reason:Windows needs to start over or it gives ya errors.
Additional Comment:Linux+MAC=Leave On

 

[Isaac20]

I prefer to leave my computer on when I sleep, so it can defrag or do some other time consuming task.

Oh and it keeps my room nice and warm. :biggrin:

 

[BorderLineSigs]

it matters how long you will be away from the computer...if its just to get coffee...or to grab some groceries...of course it ould be better to leave it on...but if you are going to sleep...or going to work, you should turn it off...it will make your energy bill through the roof! and its bad for the enviroment

 

[Hauzer]

ShutDown, it'll give your computer the maintenance it needs thus making your computer faster the next time you turn it on. There are also alot of advantages of turning it off.

 

[FalseHope]

You can just restart it when it starts to get slow. Turning it off might cool it off, but heck if you are doing something or need to leave your chats open or something, PC on all the way. I leave my PC on, and restart it only when needed.