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Author Topic: Do you leave your PC on or turn it off when not using it? Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-26-2004 06:09 PM                        Home computer: Puts itself on standby after not being used for 2 hours. Theatre computer: We turn it off every night. Seems dumb to have it running 24/7 when it only gets about 2 hours of use a day. If I have to turn it on mid-day for any reason, I leave it on for the rest of the day. Day job work computer: It runs all the time but it's covered by a horrendously expensive service agreement, so we can abuse it all we want and get free replacement stuff. I hate the thing (well, the software really) but that is a nice safety net. Day job office PC: I turn it off when there's a storm coming but otherwise it runs all the time.  |  IP: Logged Paul Cassidy Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 549 From: Auckland, New Zealand Registered: Aug 2001 posted 07-26-2004 06:24 PM                        When it comes to my work PC , this is left powered on all the time , even if I log off ..... as we used to get problems with Nas Filers and DHCP Server Addressing , and any PC that was turned off lost access to apps that required an IP Address when we did have issues .... accept mine  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-26-2004 08:57 PM                        Just to upset Brad and his Windows fetish # uname -a ULTRIX armadillo 4.5 0 RISC # uptime 9:57pm up 727 days, 1:51, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00 --------------- $ uname -a SunOS dragon 5.8 Generic_108528-23 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-2 $ uptime 9:57pm up 335 days, 6:51, 9 users, load average: 0.14, 0.13, 0.10 --------------- H:\>ver Microsoft Windows 2000 [Version 5.00.2195] H:\>net statistics workstation Workstation Statistics for \\BUTTERFLY Statistics since 6/13/2004 6:31 PM [snippage]  |  IP: Logged Phil Hill I love my cootie bug Posts: 7595 From: Hollywood, CA USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 07-26-2004 09:04 PM                  OMG! Scott has succumbed to that evil I-30 stuff! >>> Phil  |  IP: Logged Dean Kollet Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 591 From: Florida State University Registered: Jul 2003 posted 07-26-2004 09:16 PM                     I leave my laptop on all the time, but I have the monitor shut off after 15 minutes to save power (and it does). My server is always on. People that worry if they leave it on someone is just gonna hack onto it are being a little paranoid. Setup a firewall (hardware is better, but very expensive) and shut down all your ports. Oh yeah....and don't suspicious software just run in the background. ...Or, when I don't want to worry about all that, I just boot to Linux  |  IP: Logged Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-26-2004 10:12 PM                     For the iMac: On in the morning. Off at night. Screensaver is set to activate after 5 minutes of inactivity. Screen sleeps after 10. Disk drive sleeps after 10. The whole computer sleeps after 15 minutes. For the iBook: Never shut off except when necessary. (Low battery or long period of no use.) Again, Screensaver goes on after 5 minutes. Screen and disk sleep after 10 and the whole computer sleeps after 15. When I'm done using the computer for a particular session, I simply close the lid and put it in my computer bag. It goes to sleep immediately and will remain this way for several days on a charge, if necessary. Even though it's got a Li-Ion battery I still fully discharge before recharging.  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-26-2004 10:36 PM                        On screensavers: I have read in who-knows-how-many places that screen savers are not necessary now because burn-in is no problem anymore. Well the computer I use at my day job is only 1 1/2 years old, and it has burn-in on its monitor. (It's a Dell monitor.) So now I'm a believer in screen savers again.  |  IP: Logged David Stambaugh Film God Posts: 4021 From: Eugene, Oregon Registered: Jan 2002 posted 07-26-2004 10:43 PM                        Screensavers are still very necessary for CRT and plasma displays. Not an issue with LCD. We recently had a loaner plasma display for a project we were working on, and someone (not me!) left a static image of the company logo on it overnight, and of course the next morning the logo was burned into it quite clearly.  |  IP: Logged Daryl C. W. O'Shea Film God Posts: 3977 From: Midland Ontario Canada (where Panavision & IMAX lenses come from) Registered: Jun 2002 posted 07-26-2004 10:45 PM                        Wow, armadillo sure is a busy machine! It's amazing it can sustain that uptime with such a load. ...and just for Scott, to save him digging out his 2000 Reskit, uptime.exe. Amazingly penthouse was just rebooted after 100 days to apply a patch that stubbornly wouldn't allow me to force no reboot. Windows Server 2003 has been as stable as pretty much any *nix platform I use, just a LOT more restricitive of what I can do with it, or how easily it can be done. FWIW, I recommend setting hard drive idle spin down timers to the maximum time possible, or at least an hour. 10 minutes is definetely too short since it will cause many more starts and stops which != good.  |  IP: Logged Scott D. Neff Theatre Dork Posts: 919 From: San Francisco, CA Registered: Oct 1999 posted 07-26-2004 11:38 PM                        I turn mine of whenever I leave the house. Or else one of my family members will log on under their screen names and it'll slow the whole thing down. But while I'm home I leave it on.  |  IP: Logged Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-27-2004 11:23 AM                     I agree that screensavers aren't as necessary as they once were but they still have a use: Keeping prying eyes off your screen. If you leave the computer for a short time, to get a cuppa' coffee or something, it's easy for people to see what you're up to. The screensaver covers up what you are doing and lessens the chance that somebody can stick their nose into your business. This isn't so important in the home environment. It's more for the office environment. I just set my computer's sleep timers this way out of habit. Remember, sleep timers need COMPLETE inactivity for a set period of time. Any activity, even one keypress or one transaction to/from the hard drive cache resets the timer. I can use the computer for quite a long time without those timers tripping me up. It also helps if you know that I use my computers in spurts where it could be several hours between sessions. Sleep settings that make sense for me may not make sense for you.  |  IP: Logged Ryan Luby Film Handler Posts: 70 From: Minneapolis, Minnesota Registered: Jun 2004 posted 07-27-2004 03:38 PM                     My laptop stays on all day but I turn it off when I go to bed or when I'm taking it somewhere and I don't hook it up to the radio.  |  IP: Logged Claude S. Ayakawa Film God Posts: 2738 From: Waipahu, Hawaii, USA Registered: Aug 2002 posted 07-27-2004 04:13 PM                        My G4 imac desktop is put on the sleep mode and kept that way always except when I go away on trips lasting a couple of days or longer. My G4 Powerbook laptop is always turned off after I use it in a public place but kept in a sleep mode when I am using it at home. -Claude  |  IP: Logged Brandon Willis Expert Film Handler Posts: 216 From: Richmond, VA, USA Registered: Apr 2004 posted 07-27-2004 09:20 PM                     The back office computer, manager sub stations, box office POS terminals, and concession terminals at the theatre stay on all the time. The only time those computers power off is when the power goes out. This is so home office can get our files and update our crap overnight. My computer at home gets shut down every night before I hit the hay. I'll be shutting it down in a little while so I can go to bed before my double shift tomorrow, which includes the kid's shows. 9AM-1AM. It's going to be a long day.  |  IP: Logged Ryan Luby Film Handler Posts: 70 From: Minneapolis, Minnesota Registered: Jun 2004 posted 07-28-2004 02:34 PM                     Because it's relevent and new: Go Green: Shut down idle PCs --------- Go green: Shut down idle PCs By Brian Bergstein Associated Press Wednesday, July 28, 2004 Posted: 12:37 PM EDT (1637 GMT) (AP) -- Q. I've heard that frequently turning my computer on and off can hurt the performance of internal parts. But I don't want to leave it on all the time either and waste power. What's the best course? A. While it once might have been true that computer hard drives or power-supply systems could be degraded over time by turning the machines on and off, there's little reason now not to go the green (and money-saving) route: Shut things completely down if you're not going to be using your PC for many hours. Recent tests at Canada's University of Waterloo found that computers with Pentium 4 processors running at 1.7 gigahertz drew 110 watts of electricity while booting up and 60 watts when they were on but idle. A 17-inch cathode-ray tube (CRT) monitor added an additional 75 watts. Newer, flat-screen LCD monitors use about half as much juice as CRTs. In a sense, then, the PC isn't a big juice hog. A microwave oven devours electricity at a rate of 750 to 1,100 watts, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. PCs in power-saving standby or sleep mode have even less of a presence. In the Waterloo tests, they were draining 35 watts. That's roughly equivalent to three clock radios. But add up hours of standby time, and multiply that by the millions of computers in the world, and it is some serious electricity. In fact, microchip maker Infineon Technologies AG, which is working on making electronics' sleep modes more energy-efficient, estimates that a mere 1 percent decrease in standby power consumption would save the nation 360 megawatts -- the equivalent of a medium-sized power plant. Put another way, 10 percent of an average home's electricity consumption comes from machines of some kind sitting on standby, said Infineon spokesman Saswato Das. Dell Inc., the world's leading seller of PCs, has no official position on whether its customers should leave the machines running or not. Leaving computers on all the time doesn't erode their performance, but it doesn't appear that turning them off and on does either, because the reliability of key parts has improved significantly, spokesman Lionel Menchaca said. "There used to be a bigger difference in terms of wear and tear when you power up your PC, but it's not as much of an issue now," Menchaca said. After the tests at Waterloo, Manfred Grisebach of the university's information systems and technology group pointed out that hard drives that never get shut down seem to live a long time. But, he said, so do drives that get shut off all the time. "What we can't say is which last longer," he said.  |  IP: Logged

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