Do you leave your computer running all the time?

[Whoa_Nelly]

Sometimes I do, and it seems to slow things down over a period of several days. Other times, I just shut it off for the night.

Used to be on my earlier (dinosaur) machines that I sometimes had problems when booting up in the morning after shutting down for the night...would get error messages and all sorts of shit...but, that was waaaay back in the early '90s before I had any antivirus or firewalls.

[El Fuego]

1. Yes

I just have the monitor on auto-shutoff.

[Whoa_Nelly]

2. Me, too...but the hard drive is still active to some degree

and according to Bob Rankin (Internet Tourbus), it's better to shut it down.

http://www.askbobrankin.com/do_computers_get_tired.html

<snip>
In a fascinating article on electronics trouble shooting, Foutz talks about something called a Single Event Upset (SEU) that can cause electronic circuitry to malfunction. An SEU can be caused by a power glitch, or a cosmic ray passing through a integrated circuit, and can actually flip the logic state (from 1 to 0 or vice versa) of a circuit. A cascading effect may trigger a hardware lockup or an infinite loop in software.

[kittykatkoffeekup]

3. It should depend how you use your computer

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question328.htm

[Redstone]

4. No, no, NO! Jesus, shut your damn computer off at night, would you?

Do you have any idea how many millions of kilowatt-hours of electricity are wasted in this country every year because people leave their computers on overnight?

A lot, that's how many.

Shut your damn computer off if you're not going to be using it within the next hour or so.

Please.

Redstone

[Whoa_Nelly]

5. How many kilowatt hours estimate per computer?

More than me leaving a couple of lights on in the house at night?

Do computers really use a lot of electricity??

[Redstone]

7. Yes, they do. Follow the link in the posts upthread to get

the figures. And multiply that by literally millions of computers.

Furthermore, shutting off the computer flushes the RAM (which restarting it also does), and whether you understand this concept or not, trust me, it's a good thing to do.

Redstone

[Whoa_Nelly]

8. And I do!

Trust you O8)

[Redstone]

11. Thanks. Now do your part to save electricity, and shut your

computer off. And buy Compact Fluorescent bulbs for all your household lights. You'll be glad you did; they last forever and use very little electricity.

Redstone

[Nevernose]

9. Curiosity: Do you use flourescent bulbs? (n/t)

n/t

[Redstone]

10. If you're asking me, yes. Every single light in our house

and in my office has a Compact Fluorescent bulb, except the few that have tubular fluorescents.

We have not one single incandescent bulb. And we're talking roughly fifty lights here (it's a big house).

Redstone

[Nevernose]

14. I was actually responding to Whoa Nelly

But congratulations anyway. I, personally, have yet to switch my bedroom reading light to flourescent (I'm apparently a violent sleeper, and it makes better economic sense to use regular bulbs anywhwere near the bed).

But good for you ayway. If Thomas Edison or Henry Ford were alive, they'd be inventing low-e lightbulbs and building hybrids.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

6. My brother (who made my original computer and who is an expert)

told me to shut it down just the way Redstone said...if you're not going to be on it in the next hour....shut it off.....

So I always do......

:shrug:

[qnr]

12. Yes. Servers, IRC bots, etc.

[Ptah]

13. Mine is always on.

My daughter and her two sisters have complete access.

It also is an effectve air filter.

:hi:

[BamaGirl]

15. I turn mine off at night

or if I'm going to be out of the house for awhile.

[realisticphish]

16. yup

though, about once a week, i turn it off for a few hours, while im at class. i let it cool down, and it seems to help with stopping any slow-down