Bryan

A 'reason' to leave it on all the time?

When you turn a pc off everything cools down - including the metal conductors on components...

The cooling and re-heating of these metal parts will of course cause them to expand and contract ant this can be enough to cause component failure.



A reason to switch off?

If your PC has a sudden power failure, when you try and switch it back on you may find that it will not boot up. The OS can be fried forcing you to re-install your operating system. You may lose data also.




By all means if your PC is not 'doing' anything whilst you sleep/work (EG. Downloading, acting as a server, controlling home automation, acting as a CCTV recorder, recording TV etc.) then switch it off. The chances of losing data are greater than that of component failure. You'll also save a few quid on electricity.



AND if the reason you leave it on all the time is because it takes sooooo long to boot up then why not use Hibernate? Hibernate copies the current state of your session to the HDD in a file and then shuts down the PC. When you switch on it loads this file and you are back where you left off but much sooner

Bryan

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ksebruce

That all makes good sense Bryan.

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Ken n Steph

You can't have a rainbow without rain!

johnsandywhite

I put mine on for an hour (or less) in the morning and arouind 1 1/2 hours in the evening/ The only time I used to leave our FULL size computer on over night, was when I was downloading movies.

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Bulletguy

On.....or switch off??

There is quite a bit of paranoia about viruses, crashes, fried components etc etc. A bit like insisting on keeping the pc room a smoke and dust free environment. It makes me wonder sometimes how some folk even dare to switch the damn thing on!

In ten years of computing i've had two major 'crashes' during internet surfing which meant a reformat, endless viruses all dealt with by the AV program i use, and as i live in a village away from any major towns or cities, power cuts are the accepted 'norm'. Living in a town or city means you will be less prone to power cuts than someone living in rural or semi rural areas.

Use a good AV program to sort out any possible viruses and spyware, a good quality power surge protecter such as Belkin which will protect from lightning strikes or sudden power fluctuation, and a program such as Mailwasher which enables you to read email before opening it to OE.

I've often left my pc running over an entire weekend when i've been at home. The bottom line is it is using electricity.
If you don't want to pay for it......switch it off!