Turn it off or leave it on?

[Shorty Final]

there was a thread here with the story of a PC man testing Macs.One thing struck me was he said that ~even after weeks of wroking on his PC it had never needed a reboot~.I am wondering now.. my practice of turning off the computer every night and startng it up again in the morning,is their any point to doing that?Does it wear the PC out or is it good to restart so it unscrambles itself?
Leave it on until it seizes or restart everyday?What is better?

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Shorty Final,

I always leave my PCs on, I have PCs here at the office that have been running 24/7/365 since 1998.

Each time you turn the computer on, you heat it up and the parts expand. When you turn it off, the parts contract and there is a chance to get condensation. When the PC is always on, it helps keep out any moisture since it is warmer than the surrounding air outside the case.

Take Care,

Richard

[BEagle]

Richard, would you advocate the same for laptop PCs when at home?

[Mac the Knife]

AFAIK it's not so much condensation (unless you live in Florida...) as thermal cycling. Soldered connections fatigue and crack, connections and chips work their way out of sockets and other mischief happens.

Manys the PC I've "repaired" just by reseating chips - a firm thumb, a tiny crunch (not from the mobo hopefully), and voila!

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

BEagle,

With Notebooks I go with them off and plugged in so they charge. :ok:

Take Care,

Richard

[goates]

As most, if not all, PC's today have the ability to shut down virtually all of the components in them, leaving one on won't use much more power than turning it off. In fact, one article I read showed that turning off a computer, but leaving it plugged in, could use more power than the sleep or standby modes. I think this had something to do with business PC's and Wake-On-LAN network cards, but it was still interesting.

Windows NT, 2000 and XP are much better at handling memory and errors than Win98 and below were (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/216641/EN-US/), so don't need reboots to clear the memory. Unix based systems like MacOSX and Linux are also really good this way too.

Unless I will be away for a few days, I just leave my computer on. During a bad thunderstorm I may turn it off too. It's just easier to sit down and start working than having to wait.

goates

[Shorty Final]

you guys are really helpful,thank you.
So leaving it on is better even without condensation as a problem,I understand that.Which makes me ask something else if possible.In Windows XP is there a special setting or modus to switch to for leaving the pc on wihtout it eats too much electricity?

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Shorty Final,

If you go into the Screensaver Tab you can click on the Power Button and set when you want the Screen and Drives to power down.

Take Care,

Richard

[IO540]

I run several PCs at the office 24/7, because I have always found that such failures as I have had, always happened at switch-on (or at switch-off, obviously one cannot tell if the thing died then because it was turned off :O ).

It could be thermal cycling or it could be voltage spikes etc.

The most common failures by far have been hard drives.