Turning off computers- do you, or not?

[Gary Gill]

I leave mine on 24/7. My reasoning is the cycles of on and off, heat and cool the components. The heat and cool cycling might work harden those components. Maybe not, but that's my reason and I am sticking t it.

[Paul Lawrence]

Only one direct mention of a UPS (uninterruptible power supply.) I'm sure others have one, but just didn't mention it.

I don't have any electronics that aren't covered by a UPS. None. TVs, sat boxes, stereos and network devices. All have continuous power. They never see power glitches. (Even my refrigerator and freezer have a voltage cutoff device to keep them off for a set time after a power outage.)

All of my computer problems have gone away with this UPS arrangement over the last few decades.

My computers are put into "Sleep" mode in the evening (iMacs). My only PC left is for programming so it shuts off in the evening after running a backup program.

A UPS on every device is the only way to protect those hard drives when there's a power outage.

[Mike Null]

I leave two of mine on except when I want to reboot them for a reason. One is an XP and the other a Win 7 pro. Both are connected to a UPS. My Macbook Pro is shut down when I'm finished using it. It is not used for my business. I have another Win 7 Pro which is my dedicated shipping pc. I generally leave it on unless I'm traveling.

I use AVG Free and have never had any problems. I tend to replace my stuff every 6 to 8 years. Most of my work is graphics related.

[roger wiegand]

Never. I'm told most electronic issues are the result of number of power cycles, don't know if that's true. With all solid state drives I don't worry about mechanical failure of the drives and the mimi fan doesn't run unless you're actively pushing the machine. Having to go boot the computer every time I want to play music in the shop or living room would be a pain. I don't think the Mac Mini uses much power when it's asleep, the case never gets warm.

[Kev Williams]

I should know better than to start talking about stuff like this, it always seems to kick Murphy's Law into effect...

I start this thread yesterday, and just now I find my 'main' computer (the one with all my email), that I left on last night for once, completely stone cold dead. Because of the email I started to panic a bit.

But fortunately I follow the "is it plugged in?" form of initial troubleshooting, and found the problem: The powerstrip, which is screwed to a wall, that the computer is plugged into, was now not screwed to the wall. It was laying face down on the desk, and the switch was turned off...

Murphy's Law works. The powerstrip has never left the wall before. Within 24 hours of deciding to try NOT turning off the computer, it does. And really, what are the odds of it falling just right enough to flip the switch off?

I've told people for many years I have a ghost. And his name is Murphy...

But all's well...

[Brian Elfert]

I leave my computer running 24x7 except if I am leaving town for a few days. I have an SSD instead of a mechanical hard drive so thermal stress should be less of an issue. One of the main reasons I leave it on is so I can use it at any time without waiting for it to boot and stabilize along with the time taken to launch all the software.

[Leo Graywacz]

I should know better than to start talking about stuff like this, it always seems to kick Murphy's Law into effect...

I start this thread yesterday, and just now I find my 'main' computer (the one with all my email), that I left on last night for once, completely stone cold dead. Because of the email I started to panic a bit.

But fortunately I follow the "is it plugged in?" form of initial troubleshooting, and found the problem: The powerstrip, which is screwed to a wall, that the computer is plugged into, was now not screwed to the wall. It was laying face down on the desk, and the switch was turned off...

Murphy's Law works. The powerstrip has never left the wall before. Within 24 hours of deciding to try NOT turning off the computer, it does. And really, what are the odds of it falling just right enough to flip the switch off?

I've told people for many years I have a ghost. And his name is Murphy...

But all's well...

I think it just told you it wants to be turned off at night

[Larry Browning]

If there was ever a question that has no right answer, it is this one. It is sort of like what is your favorite food or color. For every reason you might have to shut down every night there is an equally valid reason to keep it on. I say it's whatever makes you feel better, shut it off or keep it on, it really doesn't make a hill of beans difference. I'm not even going to tell what I do.
Here where I work we are strongly encouraged to shut the power off to our computers when we leave each day, mostly to save electricity. A few computers won't make much of a difference, but thousands of computers left on, can add up. Every little bit helps add to my profit sharing at the end of the year.

[David Masters]

Now that Wake on LAN works reliably, I let the iMac and Windows machines sleep after a couple hours of inactivity. I'm not sure how much power I'm saving though. The three RAID cabinets stay powered up when the iMac is asleep.

Dave

[Matt Meiser]

We shut our laptops off when we go on vacation and put them in a safe location. They are set to go to sleep though. All have SSDs so they wake up very fast when needed. My Windows Home Server and my VMWare environment have been shut off once last year (when my daughter plugged a vacuum into an outlet connected to the UPS in my rack!)

[Bruce Page]

If you have an SSD drive, what is the power consumption difference between setting it to sleep and a full shutdown?

[Curt Harms]

If you have an SSD drive, what is the power consumption difference between setting it to sleep and a full shutdown?

Here's the power use on mine: Power Consumption Idle: 0.60W, Active: 3.450W. I couldn't find anything on sleep, I'd guess pretty close to 0 seeing as flash doesn't need to be refreshed.

There seems to be some advice on the interwebz about disabling hibernate on SSD systems, I have no idea if valid or not. Here is one example:

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/disable...anty-purposes/

My primary O.S. Ubuntu has two lower power states. One is suspend, the other hibernate. I use suspend-to-RAM which keeps the current state in RAM but sets the rest of the system to a very low power state, just enough to keep the RAM fresh. I found hibernate on Windows XP not much faster to resume than starting from a cold boot. Dunno about Win 7 and newer, I seldom boot them and for a specific purpose when I do.

[Larry Browning]

I think for home use of only a few PC's the power consumption is a total non issue. We are talking most likely sub or very few pennies a day. Why would you care?

[Mike Henderson]

If you have an SSD drive, what is the power consumption difference between setting it to sleep and a full shutdown?

My understanding of "sleep" is that the state of the computer is left in RAM and the processor clock is slowed down quite a bit, just enough to refresh the RAM. With "hibernate" the state of the computer is put on the drive - either mechanical or SSD - and the computer is shut off.

To recover from sleep, you just have to wake everything up and get the processor clock up to speed. With hibernate, you need to "boot" but the state of the computer is then transferred from the disk back to RAM. So recovery from hibernate takes longer than recovery from sleep.

Sleep requires continuous power while hibernate can turn power off.

At least that's my understanding.

Mike

[Larry Browning]

My understanding of "sleep" is that the state of the computer is left in RAM and the processor clock is slowed down quite a bit, just enough to refresh the RAM. With "hibernate" the state of the computer is put on the drive - either mechanical or SSD - and the computer is shut off.

To recover from sleep, you just have to wake everything up and get the processor clock up to speed. With hibernate, you need to "boot" but the state of the computer is then transferred from the disk back to RAM. So recovery from hibernate takes longer than recovery from sleep.

Sleep requires continuous power while hibernate can turn power off.

At least that's my understanding.

Mike

This is my understanding as well.
We had one person where I work put his laptop in sleep mode, then put it in his backpack and zipped it up for a long trip to another plant location. When he got there 3 days later he discovered the heat generated within that confined place had fried his computer. The PC service department gave him a very hard time about him not taking proper care of his PC. That incident prompted several memos concerning the proper use of sleep vs hibernate.