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**vw72** · Mar 29, 2014, 09:58 AM

Computers are a lot like airplanes, the most risky part of a flight is the starting (takeoff) and stopping (landing) the in between (cruising) is a lot less problematic without some external influence.

Likewise with computers. Hard drives, being mechanical, are much more likely to fail when the mechanical parts first have to move or stop. While moving or stopped, they tend to continue. Of course, they can be damaged by some external influence, such as dropping them. The other electronic components are likewise to only fail when they power up and there is that initial surge of electricity. Think of a light bulb, they almost never burn out when already on. It is only when you first flip the switch and there is that initial surge that the filament pops.

There are many reasons to turn off a computer such as energy conservation, overheating (from inadequate cooling), mechanical failure (even if less likely to fail, eventually mechanical parts will fail), etc. There are also reasons to leave it on, most of which equate to a lower likelihood for failure. For me, however, I leave it on, because I want it isntantly available, which has nothing to do with failure rates but my own impatience.

**SteveRiley** · Mar 29, 2014, 07:27 PM

In my experience, computers fail while running: graphics chips overheat and invoke thermal shutdown; NICs mysteriously go offline and won't acknowledge packets until a reboot; drives seize up during extended writes. The only machines in my house that never power down are the servers. All desktops and laptops go to sleep after 20 minutes of idle time. The power savings is significant -- even here in Washington state where power is pretty cheap.

**Teunis** · Mar 30, 2014, 04:17 AM

I've been brought up not to waste anything and that includes power.
So just from the power point of view I'd already switch off a computer, just as I've replaced most light bulbs with the LED kind.
I just got the annual electricity bill and it's for a little over 1400 KWh, two years ago it was nearly 1700 KWh.

But in case of an update or some slow sorting programs I will leave a machine on, after 5 minutes the screens will turn off anyway.
There are times I like to use the hibernate option(s) but only on very solid systems, like this (my main) laptop I especially run the 'next' versions and reboots are getting almost as useful as on Microsoft

.

I don't worry about wear and tear due to frequent start ups, modern equipment can handle it well.

Now the company computer is a different beast, Win7 and it often but not always needs many minutes to get to the log in and many more to get on the network, it has become so bad I'm reluctant to switch it off.
Because I do the necessary maintenance it must be a corporate IT inflicted problem, fragmentation is ruled out because it has an SSD.

**oshunluvr** · Mar 30, 2014, 08:51 AM

IME - in the old days of personal computers (the 80s) , you would eventually have to re-assemble your system because the expansion and contraction would cause the chips to wiggle out of their sockets. I fixed dozens of PCs that wouldn't turn on by simply opening them up, re-seating the chips, and kicking the power on. Also, the belief as at the time that the hard drives would fail faster from heat-cool cycles than from constant spinning. That's all no longer relevant, of course.

Nowadays - I leave my desktop computer on because I use it sporadically throughout the day. I simply can't shut in down and light it back up 10 times a day. I suppose I should be turning it off when I know I'm not using it for awhile, but I'm too lazy. It would be an interesting experiment to shut it down more often for a month to see how much it actually effected my power bill. I do have my monitors go into power-save mode, but I have been unable to use sleep mode because my graphics won't restore and I haven't bothered to figure out why.

One thing for sure: My big desktop computer with dual videos cards, 16gb RAM, 3 hard drives and 2 SSD's runs at a more consistent temperature than any laptop. It's water cooled and well ventilated!

**oshunluvr** · Mar 30, 2014, 08:55 AM

Originally posted by Teunis View Post

Now the company computer is a different beast, Win7 and it often but not always needs many minutes to get to the log in and many more to get on the network, it has become so bad I'm reluctant to switch it off.
Because I do the necessary maintenance it must be a corporate IT inflicted problem...

I work in a Federal Government building and use a PC of theirs. It goes to sleep, but I never shut it down. They do updates and policy changes almost daily via the network and I want it to do all that while I'm away from my desk. Otherwise, I'd be starring at a 20 minute startup and several reboots every Monday and likely most other mornings!

**woodsmoke** · Mar 31, 2014, 11:14 PM

Since this is not something that is very easy of resolution it is "all on the person's take"....and that derives from:

a) personal experience
b) communicated experience...

PLEASE........others............contribute YOUR thoughts!!

It WILL help others in their deliberations in their PERSONAL situation.

woodsmoke

**whatthefunk** · Mar 31, 2014, 11:20 PM

Originally posted by woodsmoke View Post

Since this is not something that is very easy of resolution it is "all on the person's take"....and that derives from:

a) personal experience
b) communicated experience...

PLEASE........others............contribute YOUR thoughts!!

It WILL help others in their deliberations in their PERSONAL situation.

woodsmoke

I would love to contribute, but dont understand your original post at all.

**woodsmoke** · Mar 31, 2014, 11:38 PM

ummmm say what you want to say.

woodtryingtopromotediscussionsmoke

**life0riley** · Apr 01, 2014, 12:00 AM

My Kubuntu 12.04 LTS ASUS desktop stays on all the time. I use it throughout the day, and it is also the print server. It hosts the VirtualBox guests.

The Windows 7 Desktop stays on all the time. It is used by wife and kids throughout the day.

My Kubuntu 12.04 LTS file server is used for backup and print server as needed by me only. It is only turned on as needed. It is also older hardware (Pentium 4) noisy, and uses more electricity.

**GreyGeek** · Apr 01, 2014, 09:36 AM

My experience almost mirrors that of oshunluver. When I was selling Apple ][+ machines many of the chips were socketed. One of my demos of the durability of that machine was to hold it over my head at arms length and then give it a gentle toss. That's a drop from nearly 8 feet. The lid usually popped off, and often several keys popped off. I'd pick up the case, firmly reseat the chips, put the keys back on, and then put on the lid. Plug in the power cord and the TV (monitor) and turn it on. I did that dozens of times and never had an Apple fail to start afterwards. That was before the days of hard drives. One would be insane to do that with a PC with an HD, or with a tower. When I got a call about a problem with an Apple, and most other desktops and towers since then, my first piece of advice was to turn it off, pull the power cord, take off the lid (or side) and firmly reseat every socketed chip, and also all peripheral cards. Then put it back together and turn it on. That usually solved the problem 95% of the time. That's why a lot of PC repair shops did their work out of sight of the customer. If the customer knew how easy that was to do, and how many times it solved the problem, most of the easy profits of PC repair shops would have dried up.

Back then desktops (mini's) and towers had 500 watt power supplies. The monitors were CRTs that consumed another 250 watts. Printers had a motor to drive a heavy print head that had 9 electromagnets and to spool the paper, which took another 150 watts. So, leaving all that on would consume about 1Kw/hr. Left on 24/7/365 a tower would burn 61,000 KWhrs. But, electricity was cheaper back then, and that tower's electric bill was probably around $1,200 per year.

In my experience trouble usually reared its head during the boot up. I can't recall in instance of an error msg during the power down, although I suspect that problems were equally likely during either power up or power down. The IBM Power On Self Test (POST) had set of beep codes that would indicate what component was giving a problem during the boot up, which was helpful if the monitor was the problem.

Today, laptops usually burn less than 40 watts/hr. Mine is advertised at 20 W/hr which, if left on 24/7/365 would burn only about 2,500 KWhr. At today's 5 cents/KWhr that's about $120/yr.

Taking the panels off of laptops to seat memory sticks or other devices that are plugged into the mobo is a whole other can of worms, but something I've never had to do. I've taken laptop panels off to upgrade RAM, and I've replaced display panels and keyboards, but the mobo chips are soldered in. At today's prices it is almost cheaper to buy another laptop than to scrounge replacement parts and DIY.

**oshunluvr** · Apr 01, 2014, 11:27 AM

Originally posted by GreyGeek View Post

Taking the panels off of laptops to seat memory sticks or other devices that are plugged into the mobo is a whole other can of worms, but something I've never had to do. I've taken laptop panels off to upgrade RAM, and I've replaced display panels and keyboards, but the mobo chips are soldered in. At today's prices it is almost cheaper to buy another laptop than to scrounge replacement parts and DIY.

I've had to disassemble a big Dell multimedia laptop to clean out the cooling fins and reset the cooling block. Other than that, most components that might need replacing or upgrading (RAM, HDs, etc.) are usually accessible from easily removed panels on modern laptops.

And BTW: The visual of Jerry standing there and purposefully tossing an old Apple ][ into the air gave me a good chuckle. Hey GG, remember when hard drives were the size of toasters? And when powering up sounded like jet airplanes taking off and they'd get too hot to touch after a couple hours? Ah, good times, good times...

**GreyGeek** · Apr 01, 2014, 05:06 PM

Originally posted by oshunluvr View Post

.... Hey GG, remember when hard drives were the size of toasters? And when powering up sounded like jet airplanes taking off and they'd get too hot to touch after a couple hours? Ah, good times, good times...

One of my early clients had a "fasteners" store in Grand Island. Using SAVVY I built an inventory system for him that reduced the number of employees needed to gather orders and package them from four or five taking an hour or more to one who took only 30 minutes. It's first incarnation used two DISK ][ 5.25" floppy drives for storage. Within six months he decided to significantly increase his inventory and needed more storage space. The first hard drive available for the Apple was a Corvus 5 MB HD.

The instructions said to turn it on at least 15 MINUTES BEFORE the Apple it was connected to was turned on, to allow for temperature stabilization. THEN turn on the Apple. It worked pretty good. It used a VHS tape system to back up that drive, which took about 8 hours, so it was done only at night.

When my client saw that drive his first words were "Wow, that's a barn. We'll never fill it up!". About six months later he was running out of room and had me move the system over to an IBM XT with a 10MB HD. Backup was done with 1/4" tape cassette tape drives that took about an hour, but was prone to stretching the tape.

I also moved the program from SAVVY to Advanced Revelation, a BASIC type language integrated with a PICK type database. AREV is still the most powerful dbms/client interface I've ever used, and that included QT against PostgreSQL or APEX against Oracle 10g. AREV's back end use a violation of the 3rd Normal Form of database design. It used what is called "multi-value fields" and a data dictionary which allowed one to create a dynamic field like "total cost", which contained code to multiply the "unit cost" by the "number of units" for each line item in the inventory. Another dynamic field, say "Total Inv Cost" would keep a running total of the "total cost" dynamic field.

**woodsmoke** · Apr 03, 2014, 01:03 AM

Talk about history keep going

**Bloggsworth** · Apr 03, 2014, 07:17 AM

I've been a personal computer user since 1984 (ish), and have never had a disc-drive of any sort fail on me. But from the point of view of someone who has replaced bearings on things from bicycles to IndyCars, it has been my general impression that the more often a bearing is under load, the quicker it fails; I don't suppose that HD bearings are any different. Leave an HD running 24/7 and only actually use it for a couple hours a day, is that going to damage it more than turning it off when not in use? I recall a friend who used to run a software company in the 80s telling me that IBM HDs failed after exactly 5 years - I took it with a pinch of salt (Not allowed nowadays of course, the salt I mean).

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Debate: turn computer off or leave on woodmoke's take

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