How do you leave your Pc .....
 

Your online to the web via Broadband ..... You want to pop off for lunch ...dinner etc ....

Do you just leave the Pc as is? ....http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/image...s/confused.gif or should you disable comms etc? ...
I realize that Firewalls, Antivirus etc are running to protect you but do you just walk off and leave it online ? ......

mine is usually left on as I tend to download tv shows and music so I leave it on during the day, come home and it's all downloaded

Desktops on, Laptop off and handheld doing whatever it wants.

Conan

I leave my 5 year old desktop on 24\7 as I believe the expansion and contraction of the hardware due to the operating temperatures can be damaging and\or life shortening to componments. In the 5 years I have only had one hardware failure, the PCI video card gave up.

I have a USB ADSL which requires a dialup network connection to operate. The connection can be terminated when not required and is not on all the time. This is probably just as well, as my security is provided by Zone Alarm free edition. On a few rare occasions this program has crashed, which would leave the computer unprotected against intrusion.
(I think?)

Two Dogs

For security reasons - particularly for the non-router using among us - turn off or disconnect the broadband connection whilst you are away.


NASA studied computer use and the issue of power off during inactivity as it relates to hardware longevity and they found the following:

There are several negative factors affecting the life of electronics -

Initial Start-Up power spikes and drive spin-ups.

Heating/Cooling cycle is cumulatively degrading for electrical connections (even within a chip)

Constant power-up brings with itheat issues - heat is the enemy of electronics. Also, drive bearings do have a limited life-span.


What they found is on average, if you are to be away from your PC for more than 6-8 hours, turn it off - otherwise the initialization and cyclical wear factors begin overtake the heat/wear factor as the primary cause for failure.

Agree totally with Conan - have same SOP.

Router is also set to drop connection after 15mins.... in practise this is never a problem as wake up is minimal.

Suggest you use a firewall router with Stateful Packet Inspection. Mine is backed up with a software firewalll on each machine as well.

May seem paranoid, but it is better than being hacked!!!

Also, WPA security recommended for wireless comms.

Regards,

Shuttlebus

My advice is to log out the user (particularly if they have admin access rights) before leaving it. It is also very simple to disable the network interface (although this obviously is not useful if you have scheduled downloads / updates).

I leave one PC running overnight to run AV and spyware scans (logged out and with network interface disabled).

Other PC is switched off.