Is it better to leave your computer on for a long time as opposed to turning it off and on more than once say during the day? What's your opinion? Do you leave your box running for extended amounts of time? Will leaving the comp on for ages kill it faster?

The parts will wear out sooner but not soon enough to matter. Just make sure you have a good fan and a nice cooling system to keep it cool. Also if it is running windows you may want to reboot to clear ram and keep it from getting buggy.

There is the other side of the argument:

When your PC is on, the chip (among other components) is hot. When your PC is off, the chip is cold. When you power on your PC, the heat causes the chip to expand. When you turn off your PC the chip cools and contracts.

Having your chip expand and contract several times a day *could* cause it to be damaged/crack... but in reality, this does not often happen.

I personally turn my computer off when I am not home as I generally do not use it for 8-10 hours of the day until I get home, then it stays on until I go to bed.

yes it will lessen the life of your computer if you turn it on and off but it will have been long obsolete by the time it fails from turning it on and off. dont worry about it, just do whats convenient. i turn it off at night and while im at school because i hate fan buzz and wasting power.

if im away from a few hours, i put it in stand by mode. if im going to sleep i turn it all the way off.
However in windows 98 there was a bug where if you left on the computer for 43 and 1/3 days the computer would crash! funny right?

Yeah thanks for all your opinions. I've always turned off my comp after a 3 or 4 hour spiel and about 3 or 4 times a day simply because my mother is always bitching about the power bills. So much for me wanting to leave my comp on overnight for extended downloading. *Sigh*

JESUS CHRIST! MY COMPUTER'S BEEN ON FOR THE LAST TWO MONTHS!

i bet you kazaa users love people like me.

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isn�t it like with old light bulbs? The energy they need when turned on is like leaving them on for an hour.

i dont think its that extreem but when you first boot up your comuter does use alot more power than normal operation.

keep in mind that what you use it for makes a difference as well. reading email versus processign a 50 gig database while applying gauzian blur to 6000 pictures is going to consume significantly different amounts of power.

I never turn mine off unless I really need to

mine is rarely if ever off, on 56k you need every second of downloading time, i usually reboot once every few days to sort out ram problems or after installing new programs etc
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lae

The starting and stoping of a harddisk can cause physical damage. It's happened to me and several people I know (In real life, even!!).

It isn't likely to happen, however I don't turn my computer off.

I turn my computer off whilst i am at work but i leave it on all night- normally because i download stuff all night. Turning your pc on and off quickly about 500 times will probably fuck it over- turning your pc on and off three or four times a day won't. Also leaving your pc on all the time wastes power- if there is no reason to leave your computer on then turn it off, it will save you money. Computers were designed on the whole to be strong enough to stand the general wear and tear of both long periods of on time and also short periods of time between ons and offs.

Chunk

I leave my computer on 24/7 for the sake of convenience (windows 2k starts up slowly!), plus its a part time server. To save power I turn off my monitors when I'm away from my computer becasue they are big, old, and guzzle power (2 x 19"). I usually only restart after I install new software or hardware that requires it. My uptime record is a tad over six weeks; I had to shut my computer down to take out an old burner I was selling.

Well I keep my comps going for a few days at a time, then reboot because windows seems to start stuffing up...
Anyone know of a better OS than XP btw?

Linux, any distro.

quote:

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Linux

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Amen to that.

Alternitivly Stormybaka- try BSD or Mac OS

I'd go with Mac OS over BSD though

Chunk