[gui-talk] leaving computer turned on

[Doug Lee]

My personal preference is this:
For a laptop, I leave it on 24/7 when plugged in and put it in
stand-by if it's on battery and I'm not using it.  For long down
times, I turn it off or hybernate it, depending on how well Hybernate
works on a particular laptop.

For desktop machines, I leave them on 24/7 unless I know I won't need
them for several days at once.

And to put this sort of back on topic for the list, I will point out
that stand-by and hybernate modes for laptops vary in how well they
work with assistive technology such as JAWS.  This is frustrating to
me, because I strongly prefer the ability to use those two modes
freely, yet it's hard to know ahead of time, before buying a laptop,
whether that part will work for me.

On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 07:41:32AM -0400, Ted Shelly wrote:
It's a long-standing debate.  Here are some pros and cons from my experience
of Using PCs for over 25 years:
Pros -
You can sit down and start working right away.
Start up is hard on electrical and electronic components.  They will likely
last longer if just left on.
You get automatic software updates faster, so long as you have always-on
Internet.
Cons - 
It's not green.  It takes more power to keep the PC on all the time. And it
costs more for electricity.
The PC can become slower and less stable due to "memory leaks", where
programs leave little (or large) bits of memory tied up even after you close
them.  Even latest versions of Windows have this problem.
If you have always-on Internet, you open yourself up to virus attacks.  

>From my point of view, you are much better off to turn it off daily.  One
compromise is to use the "Hibernate" mode.  It doesn't start up any faster,
but running programs are still there when you turn on again and while
hibernating you don't use any power or leave yourself open to attacks. 

Hope that helps.

Ted

-----Original Message-----
From: gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Humberto
Sent: Friday, May 13, 2011 12:44 AM
To: GUI-talk at nfbNet.org; nfbCs at nfbNet.org
Subject: [gui-talk] leaving computer turned on

Hello folks,

To all the geeks out there who really know the ins and outs of 
the PC, is it OK if I leave my PC turned on all day and night? 
Will my computer suffer or wear out by leaving it on all day? 
Will it get slow? I read on my city's networking web site that if 
I leave my computer on all the time, I would avoid startup and 
bootloading errors when shutting off and turning on. Is this 
true?
thoughts welcome everyone.

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-- 
Doug Lee                 dgl at dlee.org                http://www.dlee.org
SSB BART Group           doug.lee at ssbbartgroup.com   http://www.ssbbartgroup.com
"All these years, the people said, 'He's acting like a kid.'
He did not know he could not fly, so he did."
--Guy Clark, "The Cape" (Dublin Blues)