Always on or shut down every night?

Hi, I recently "inherited" my husband's laptop to replace my dead desktop, and I'm slowly adjusting to it. Over the years, I've fallen into the habit of leaving my desktops on pretty much 24/7, only rebooting when I absolutely had to. That makes a lot of people cringe, but I've never run into any issues. Being new to laptops, I don't know if it's safe or not to leave the laptop on and only reboot it once a week or so. It's sitting on a cooling pad on my desk, if that makes any difference. Thanks in advance for any help!

 

First off, I wonder why you leave your computer running 24/7, what is your main purpose? Is it to save the OS from booting or are you just lazy to re-start? The computer eats electricity, so to speak, so you are spending for the electricity while you are asleep or while you are not using the computer. My suggestion is for you to shut down your computer when not in use, whether it's a desktop or a laptop. That would save you a lot in life span of your computer and your hard disk as well.

 

I participate in a couple of distributed computing projects (Asteroids@home, Folding@Home, and Cosmology@Home) and usually just let them run overnight so that they can do their thing while I'm not actively using the computer. You can run them while you're using the computer, but I just prefer to start them up before bed, then stop them when I get up. That's the habit I've gotten into, anyway, but I can change things up if it's going to cause problems with the laptop.

 

I never turn mine off But I removed the battery a while ago, now just keep it connected to the AC. I haven't had issues so far, the only issue I ran into was with my 8 year old laptop... the fan broke. But other than that the laptop is still alive and kicking. I had to get a replacement just in case though.

 

For a laptop, I usually turn it off overnight unless I am still downloading something large. Even for desktops, only on rare occasions I left them on overnight.

That's said, unless you left your computer on to do some overnight tasks, there is no reason to waste the electricity. Back in the old days, people's excuse for leaving computers on 24/7 was that the hard drive will die quicker if you turn the computer on / off every day. These days most new laptops are using SSD, and these SSD do not have moving parts thus they are not affected by the power on/off of the computer.

Save yourself some electricity bill, and save the planet some pollution by turn off your computer when you are not using it.

 

Either stand-by, shell login, or powered off. Depends on the system and what it does, but usually just shell login or powered off if it's one of the other systems. The main one goes to stand-by for fast resume, but doesn't have any important info on it to worry about.

 

It really depends on how you want to use the laptop. Computers these days (more so desktops) are indeed designed to always be at some state of power. One thing I would do for sure though, is to make sure that the laptop/desktop is put into sleep mode at least relatively often. They aren't designed to be running full power 24/7.

It's a simple thing to just put a laptop to sleep (close the lid) or a desktop to sleep (press the sleep button, next to the power button) before you yourself sleep or stop using the laptop/desktop for an extended period of time.

 

I agree on the design of the computers now, be it laptop or desktop, that they can be left running 24/7. In the early days of the first Apple computers and IMB PC-XT and PC-AT, leaving the computer running for more than 24 hours is courting disaster. In this tropical country, our office have experienced burned computers twice and to consider that there was air conditioning in our office. Naturally the tech would say that it has overheated. But now you can leave your computer running and the only danger is the electric bill.

 

It should still be depended on the room temperature. Some computers with high end CPUs and dedicated graphics cards can run a lot hotter than those computers with low end CPU and onboard graphics.
For example, why do you think i7 based Surface Pro 3 and 4 have extra cooling system over the i5 and i3 versions? Because i7 runs hotter!
Same goes for my older Dell Vostro. It had a dedicated graphics card, a Nvdia 8600GT. It ran so hot when under heavy gaming. Those computers with onboard graphics are so much cooler in operating temperature.

So the room temperature matters. Lets say if the room temperature is close to over 90F (over 30C), most computers will run very hot. Even if they do not immediately develop a problem (crash, freeze, or just burn out and die on you.), long period of time under extreme heat will still shorten the life of computer parts. All these sophistic electronic parts of a computer will have their operating life cycle shortened if the temperature is higher.

So it is not just about the electrical bill. If all the computers in your company last only 2 years instead of 5, I am certain the extra budget required won't be too low.

The bottom line is, I do not think there is a reason to leave a computer on unless there is some kind of automated work to be done while you are away.

 

I always turned my laptop off before I go to bed everyday! It is a habit that I am used to. You left your laptop on because you are running something, so your laptop is working 24/7. In a sensible thinking, I believe your laptop needs a break now and then.

To save the electric and the earth issue, I even unplug things that I don't use often.

 

If my husband had his way, every computer he's ever touched would still be running to this day. For some reason he doesn't like to turn them off, and this includes laptops and smaller devices as well. I tend to be fixated on turning things off when I'm not using them, but he has no trouble leaving everything humming while he goes off to sleep at night. I like to conserve energy and he thinks computers run better if left on all the time. I'm not entirely convinced of that, myself. At least you have a cooling fan with your laptop, that helps a lot, but I think I would still turn it off if I'm not actively using it.

 

I turn off other stuff, and unplug stuff if we'll be out of the house all day. It's partially to save power, and partially because small appliances like toasters and fans make me nervous. It isn't a rational thing, but I've had a fear of fires ever since my neighbor's house was burned down by a faulty space heater.

If I wasn't running the @Home projects overnight, I wouldn't even consider leaving computers on, but I've been doing those for a few years now and I like the idea of helping out just by letting the project use my computer while I'm not. I'm not a mathematician or scientist, so I can't contribute to actual active research or anything, but I like to think that I can still help a little bit.

 

I would recommend you to jot run your Laptop Day and Night as that might put a lot of strain on your Laptop Components. Even after these many years of Evolution and changes in Mobile Computing Laptops are not capable of running on for 24x7. They might not show any initial tear but it does happen and it decreases the total life of your System. If you can somehow magically keep your Laptop CPU temperature at a normal the whole time, then go ahead. Otherwise, I would recommend you get yourself a NAS. GOOD LUCK.

 

I would recommend switching it off at night but remembering to save all your work first. Leaving it on constantly won't do the computer any justice because certain security or software updates that have been downloaded might not be able to install properly until the system is rebooted. Additionally, certain processes and applications may be left running in the background which can take up your processor usage and memory which can slow your computer down, especially if there are updates waiting to be installed, etc. It's therefore important to completely shut the system down and start it up again fairly regularly.

 

I remember the term "burn in" when we bought our first computer. The vendor advised us to let it run for more than 24 hours for the burn in - that would show symptoms if there is a problem. And true enough, there was no problem so we were happy about it. But our second computer showed something - a problem with the processor that after running for 24 hours, it wouldn't recognize any external device (the diskette drive).

But for ordinary use, I think it is a waste not only of electricity but as what @Vash said, you are exposing your laptop to a possible breakdown due to overheating.

 

The bottom line, it doesn't really matter. If leaving it on causes overheating you have a piece of crap and you should get a better system. Whether you leave it on or not depends on your usage and needs. There is no magic one size fits all answer that everybody should abide by.

As an aside, anybody telling you that leaving it plugged in is bad for the battery is full of crap. Unless you have a badly made cheap knock off charger it isn't a hazard. Modern mobile devices don't use the kind of batteries that can be overcharged.

 

Yes I remember hearing about this, this was some time ago though, I don't think it's necessary anymore because all the components are thoroughly tested now days and if your computer does run into problems and it's the manufacturers fault the guarantee will cover it.

 

I typically don't shut down my computer after I'm done with it, i just close the lid off which puts it on sleep mode and that's it, i don't have to go through the whole rebooting process the next day, just press a key to wake it up. This has always been how i roll and i have no issues with it. I only reboot it when it sometimes freeze on me but that's a rare occurrence.

 

I once done that when I had to go out, the only problem was that it didn't switch off completely, so when I came back the computer was still running with the lid down. Needless to say that it was super hot. I normally will just leave it and it will hibernate by itself with the screen up or I switch it off.

 

That was actually very silly advice on the part of the vendor. A 24 hour burn in period is not nessacary unless the vendor is selling potentially faulty hardware and knows it. Some Vendors, and even manufacturers used to sell computers with overclocked parts so they could advertise and charge for the higher speed. There was a whole mess with Cyrix cpu chips causing fires. In fact that partly played into the demise of Cyrix as a brand after it was sold to National Semiconductor and is one of the reasons we have two major manufacturers to choose from now instead of three.