This is topic Do you leave your PC on or turn it off when not using it? in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.


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Posted by Stephen Frazza (Member # 2320) on 07-26-2004, 02:09 PM:
 
Do you leave your PC on or turn it off when your not using it?
Just got into a debate on this subject.I leave mine on when not using it but my roommate turns his off.Just curious as to what other
people do and there thinking as to pros & cons of it.

I have a Zone Alarm firewall and anti-virus and spyware software so
i'm not worried about that the debate was more on supposed wear & tear on computer by leaving it running.
 

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Posted by Jeremy Fuentes (Member # 2135) on 07-26-2004, 02:13 PM:
 
I turn mine off at work because its a government computer, and I dont want idiots trying to go in and mess with the work that I do. And trust me, there are some here.
 

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Posted by Cory Isemann (Member # 2517) on 07-26-2004, 02:26 PM:
 
I leave mine on all the time. I have a UPS, but a small one. I just find it convenient not to have to wait for it to boot up every time I want to check my email.
 

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Posted by Dan Lyons (Member # 1454) on 07-26-2004, 02:36 PM:
 
I leave mine on all the time. No wonder it gets warm in my room...
I only turn it off if i'm going to be away from home for a few days.

danny
 

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Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 07-26-2004, 02:47 PM:
 
Plusses of leaving it on: Less thermal cycling stress on semiconductors. If the disks stay spinning (aren't told to spin down by power management) there are fewer head "landings" to cause wear and kick up particles.

Minuses: Disk drive and fan bearings have a finite life. Wasted power, and during cooling season air conditioning power to remove the heat. During the heating season it's just that much less heat your heating system must create. If you have electric resistance heating your electricity for anything you use in the house whether computers and electronics or light bulbs is essentially free since all that energy eventually turns into heat. No reason to turn anything off. If you have another type of heat the cost is only the differential in price between electric energy and whatever you use.
 

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Posted by Paul Cassidy (Member # 951) on 07-26-2004, 02:52 PM:
 
I only leave mine on if I'm doing DVD rendering or something that takes a long time , otherwise the noise can make it hard to sleep (I have 3 PCs set up in my Room) so it sounds like a plane in flight when all 3 are going
 

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 07-26-2004, 03:27 PM:
 
I set mine to hibernate if I'm away for more than 30 minutes. I shut it down totally if I know I'm going to be away for more than an hour.
 

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Posted by Robert E. Allen (Member # 1351) on 07-26-2004, 03:52 PM:
 
I turn mine on when I get up and leave it on until I go to bed. I know what you mean about the fan thing. I waiting for my computer guy to come and change a growling fan now.


 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 07-26-2004, 04:24 PM:
 
Sometimes I'll leave my computer on for days at a time, but usually after several hours of use I shut down the system before going to bed. As Paul mentioned, the noise of the fans and such can keep you awake.

I'll shut down other items more often for the issue of security. Steven mentioned having Zone Alarm and Norton Anti Virus. Those two things are not an absolute safety net. That's not a suggestion those programs lack value; any user should indeed have those things as well as anti-spyware tools and routine methods of data back-up. I'm just saying you cannot let down your guard based on those programs alone. Some "black hat crackers" can get through that stuff and attack your machine regardless of what security software you are running.

Before I purchased my Linksys Cable/DSL router, I used PPPoE software (Enternet300) for accessing my DSL connection. I could log and log out. With the router, the connection is effectively always on. So whenever I am away from my machine, I turn off my DSL modem. That totally severs the connection making the machine "stand-alone."
 

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 07-26-2004, 04:42 PM:
 
I leave mine on all the time except when I'm on a aroad trip like now. The longest it stays on is probably 6 months at a stretch because every 6 months it gets stripped down and the dust gets blown out... It gets quite dusty after 6 months even though its s server case and has air filters. i haave lost disk drives in the past but not sibnce I have left it powered up which is about two years now.

Mark @ CLACO
 

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Posted by Jennifer Pan (Member # 2035) on 07-26-2004, 04:44 PM:
 
Off whenever not in use. I'm just weird that way!
 

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Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 07-26-2004, 04:57 PM:
 

quote: Paul Mayer

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I set mine to hibernate if I'm away for more than 30 minutes. I shut it down totally if I know I'm going to be away for more than an hour.

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quote: Phil Hill

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I even open the 225-amp main service breaker to my house at night.

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What about the food in the fridge?

The only reason I don't open the master breaker for the whole flat if I'm going to be away for a few days is that there is a light on a timer in order to make potential burglars think that the place is still occupied. I do power the computer down completely. Not only do I physically unplug it from the mains but I also disconnect it from the 'phone line, too. This dates from when my first modem was fried during a thunderstorm in the late '90s, when they were still quite expensive (it cost me around £50 to replace it). Nowadays 56k modems are pretty much given away and internal ADSL ones only cost around £15, but old habits die hard...
 

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Posted by Brian Michael Weidemann (Member # 2243) on 07-26-2004, 05:22 PM:
 
Mine is on all the time. I sleep about six feet from where the CPU is, but the fans are never distracting to the point of not sleeping. In fact, my microphones do a decent job not picking the background noise either when I'm recording. But then, I don't have one of them newfangled computers requiring an array of blast fans to keep them running at terrestrial temperatures.
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 07-26-2004, 06:02 PM:
 
My PC is on all of the time. It is a server and you don't turn off servers. I put my Mac to sleep when I go to sleep because it has an Apple Cinema Display attached, and they cannot be turned off. I don't want it shining in my face while I try to sleep. Also the power fan oscillates slower and faster... slower and faster, which gets very annoying.[av=k]
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 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.
 

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Posted by Paul Cassidy (Member # 951) on 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
 

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Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 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]
 

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Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 07-26-2004, 09:04 PM:
 
OMG! Scott has succumbed to that evil I-30 stuff!

>>> Phil
 

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Posted by Dean Kollet (Member # 1789) on 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
 

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Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 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.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 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.
 

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Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 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.
 

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Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 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.
 

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Posted by Scott D. Neff (Member # 185) on 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.
 

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Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 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.
 

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Posted by Ryan Luby (Member # 2520) on 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.
 

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 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
 

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Posted by Brandon Willis (Member # 2345) on 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.
 

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Posted by Ryan Luby (Member # 2520) on 07-28-2004, 02:34 PM:
 
Because it's relevent and new:
Go Green: Shut down idle PCs

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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.
 

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Posted by Steven Pickles (Member # 785) on 07-28-2004, 03:56 PM:
 
My machine usually stays on all the time unless there is a horrible storm outside. It's much more of a convenience to leave it on.. that way there's no wait time to check email or browse a webpage.
 

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