Community poll forum: Poll: Do you turn off your computer when it's not in use?

The only time I turn my computer off is if I am likely to be away for any considerable length of time. At night I hibernate it and during the day I leave it on stand by.

The problem with turning it off all the time is it takes an inordinate amount of time to start up again.

I don't think a state of hibernation or stand by is likely to make much difference to the so called carbon foot print, which the Physics of which I don't believe anyway.

YES !! To reduce my carbon footprint but mainly to reduce my electric bill,is,nt that just common sense??

Yes I turn my unit off for two reasons the first is no one will use it the rest of the day.The second reason is it cannot be hacked when off.

I turn mine off for 3 reasons. 1 for the energy part. 2 because I don't like things running when I am not home in case something would overheat and catch fire and 3 because I have a lot of animals and I am always cleaning animal hair from the vents on my computer. If I left it running all the time there would be a bunch more fur clogging it up no matter how much I vacuum and dust the house.

I did for a long time, but now I have problem if I remove all power.
When i shut down completely I lose the clock and bios settings. If I leave power to the motherboard it holds fine. Yes, I have replaced the battery twice to no avail. So rather than have to reset everything, I just leave power on. I guess this isn't really to relative to the question, but there you are.

More to the point, has he considered actually getting it fixed??? This reminds me of the old Dave Barry approach to auto repair... If your car makes a suspicious noise, turn up the radio.

I usually turn off my computer on school nights, as my computer is pretty loud (5 fans). I also turn it off when I'm at school. The only times I don't turn it off are weekends or friday nights. i'm not sure why, but i don't. i guess i just do it incase i'm not tired and want to get on the computer. but i would say my computer is off 75-85 hours a week. I would say most people I know never turn their computer off, so I'm keeping it on about half as long as they are. On the other hand, my computer uses a lot more energy than my friends' conputers. I turn off my computer when it's not in use, not to save energy, but to save the components of the computer. When you leave your computer on, the power supply's wattage decreases. So say you have a 520W power supply and you don't turn your computer off for a year straight - it might go down to 500W, opposed to 510W if you turn it off every night and while you're at work for a year. Hard drives also have, on average, a 3 year life span. Assuming this is due to the amount of time it's on, turning off your computer during the day and night will increase this to 6 years.

Now maybe I'm just saying this because my computer starts up in less than 45 seconds. If you have an older, slower computer, you may not be willing to do this every day.

I turn the comp off when not using to stop hackers from opening the gate. Bill

I do not turn off servers at either home or business locations for the obvious reasons but believe since the original question refers to gadgets and PC's they mean workstations. I agree with the feelings of the Rebecca D. but I do leave my workstations on at both locations as I need to be able to RDP, PC Anywhere, VNC, etc. into them from the opposite location. I'm going to look into other options now that I've been forced to think about it. The world is getting smaller as are the available resources to power it and the demand is getting larger as previously underdeveloped or slower developing nations are expanding their need and desire for technology. So I'm going to get on the bandwagon with that famous comic Rodney King and try harder to "just get along" at least from an energy standpoint. Thank you Rebecca D. You have made me think green. I appreciate you.

Yes.
1) The heat can be damaging if not ventilated well or if a fan dies. Burning dust or faulty wiring can be a fire hazard. Mechanical devices, such as fans and hard drives, can actually sieze if they've been running for extended periods of time before being powered off. RAM can be damaged causing file corruption, erratic OS behavior and unexplainable crashes and reboots.
2) A hacker can't attack a computer that's powered off. More specifically, a computer that is disconnected from the internet.
3) It does save a bit on the electric bills, too. How much, though depends on the system.

This is a valid discussion point. For purely electronic devices such as RAM, it's not a valid argument. The failure mechanisms of electronic components consist of an elevated infant mortality rate followed by an extremely long period of low mortality, followed by by a rising mortality rate as the component approaches its end of life. However, remember that end of life typically means a few decades past the point of obsolescence.

HDDs are another matter, though. As electromechanical systems, they are subject to friction, wear, and other physical degradation. Along with the manufacturers' data, my own experience leads me to believe that HDDs will live longer if they're never powered down. But then, that also includes spinning down when not in use or when the machine is operating in a reduced power mode.

So what to do? My conclusion, and my recommendation, is to back up regularly, then turn of when you can. Leaving the machine on is a poor substitute for not backing up your data.

I leave my computer on all the time, shutting it down once or twice a week.

Why:
1)I have my anti virus program set to do a complete scan at 3 am. It takes a long time to run.
2)Too impatient to wait for it to boot when I want to use the computer.
3)My screen saver displays My Pictures folder which contains photos of our prior travels and we enjoy reliving prior experiences
4)I am retired and use my computer several times a day to check e-mail, surf the net, play games, etc.

If PC's today consume more power why then do all the new models I open up as a consultant, they almost always have a 250W or 300W only supply? Years ago I had to go to 400 to 450, so I thought these devices were using less energy today (anyone please answer if you are sure of your facts). Four reasons to leave it on, I am on a UPS and I believe the lite bulb theory that failures more often occur on startup, #2, with all the power down options in the OS now, that should cut the energy usage enough and #3, I need access offsite to my files and as a test machine since I do lots of remote work so it has to be on and #4, when Windows quits working just by 'just being on' I learn from troubleshooting those incidents and that means about once a week. FOUR REASONS TO TURN IT OFF: #1-lessen chance of hackers getting in, #2-doesnt heat the room up as much (I have three on all the time), #3-After any install of new software, even if it doesnt say reboot, REBOOT, so you know When and What caused Windows to lose boot up ability, and $4-to lower power consumption lower than even Standby modes and drives spun down. I am quite confident though that a PC that isnt constantly rebooted will last longer than one that is shut on and off every day. {but also a reboot is good to see if your boot up and shutdown times have gone off the chart, these times can almost always be traced to something that you may want to eliminate.}
Dave

I turn off my computer at night when I go to bed. Also when I plant to be away for mor than a couple of hours. I do this for several reason: To save electricity, secirity and to reset RAM and other functions.

For many reasons I trun off all equipment in my office at night, leave on durning day, unless we will be out all day.

I worked at a place that made hard-drives, it is true that the spinup of the hard-drive (starting up from being off) is the time when the drive will fail most often. So I leave the drives on all day and shut them down only at night. The screens on the computer go in to black after 15 min of non use. I try to buy the better brands of hard-drives. Knock on wood, thus far all hard-drives are still running. Even the two I had to saw out of melted plastic of the computer after a fire in my office in 2003. My daughter has one and I have one connected by USB.

When I shut down I install any new windows updates that have been down loaded for the day. And I shut all power off to all equipment, including my modem, printer and hard-drives. I do this by truning off the power stripe they are pluged into.

Scanners are only connected to power when I use them, I don't leave them on all the time. I do leave my all in one printer on all the time, but it is an energy star printer. I do power cycle it about once a week so it can reset itself.

While fixing an issue with a cell phone, the tech said shutting my phone off when not is use is good for the phone and allows it to reset on powerup. I have been using the same phone since Aug 2001. The way I use the phone is whats helped it last so long. I only charge when the phone tell me it is low on power.

The same in true with my portable phone that I use around the house. I use recharage batteries in everything that I can. I only buy rechargeable AA and AAA's. Then again only recharge when fully discahrged. That makes the battery last longer.

May desktop is 5 years old, the laptop is 1, and a printer is 5 and the all in one is new. I bought the scanner at Goodwill last year. I am not one to add the lastest and greatest. I like the tried and true. I only use XP, nothing runs on Vista.

All lighting in my home has bees switched to the low energy bulbs. I recycle every thing I can. I use resusable shopping bags. And I try to buy products made from recycled materials. I also think about what goes into the making of the products I buy. Like my new all in one printer is one that you just replace the ink, not the print-head. The amount of chemicals used to make the print-head is now saved, not by me but by the company that makes my printer. Making their impact lower and in the process I now print for $0.02 instead of $0.07. As soon as we use up the one cartridge of ink, we will recycle the old printer. I also print on both sides of the paper, cutting my paper useage in half.

SAVE, SAVE is what I am all about!