should I turn my computer off every night?

Question

I have a five year old dell pentium 4 with a 17 inch big TV style monitor, and a heavy motherboard. Is it better to leave it on to hybernate and turn the monitor off when I'm not using it, or should I keep shutting it down and restarting if I use it again? Does it even matter?
More info....
I unplug the net connection when I'm not using it.

Answer 1

Turning it off is a good idea. This will reset all running processes and help to prevent your motherboard from burning out.

Answer 2

Whats a Heavy Motherboard? This type of questions is posted about ever 2 weeks. The only way I can really answer it is do you leave your car running all night? You probably don't because you know it is burning up gas and running the engine and you realize that more heat the engine produces the more chance things are to break (or not work properly).
Its close to the same thing with your computer. Now there isn't gas firing off in your computer, but there is electricity running through parts that generate heat. Even more there are mechanical parts in your computer, a power supply and hard drive have parts that well actually break down over time. These types of parts have been tested for like a 100,000 hours (or something like that). Leaving your computer on uses these parts.
So is a part more likely to break if you run it all the time, or if you use it only half of the time? The answer to the is obvious. The more your run a computer the more chances it has to break down! Thats the fact.
Now turning your computer on and off (that first burst of electricity) does wear out computer parts. So for some reason everybody went to the other extreme and decided to leave the computer on all the time.
I turn my computer on in the morning, I put it in stand-by or Hibernate through out the day when I'm not using it. And turn my computer off at night. Even Windows XP needs to be restarted ever so often.
Why would you unplug your network?

Answer 3

When you put the computer to slood/suspend your windows is still running. This is fine if you are going away for a hour or two but why would you need it on overnight? Does it take a long time to boot? is that the problem? I ask because when in suspend your files can be severly corruct by power failures causing your windows to crash. If you are taking a long time to boot and you are using an anti-virus program such as Norton 2007 or 360 I usually recomend replacing your AV program. This also pertains to McAfee 1007, Trend Micro, Computer Associates, or must other retail AV packages.

Retail AV programs want you to know they are there so you will tell others what you use. Usually this includes a large footprint (uses lots of resorces) especially on boot, while enterprise AV programs set quietly and just work as they should.

The problem is that the mainstream enterprise software is very expensive but there are alternatives.

www.Download.com has several alternatives including AVG and AVAST which are free for home use and have a much smaller footprint allowing your computer to turn on faster and run smoother.

Yes turn offf your computer overnight but clean out your system that it will boot faster and cleaner to make it more convenient booting in the morning

Answer 4

I think it is a matter of preference, I know somewhat like a car the initial start up post process is the hardest on a computer it has to cold spin up the hard drive and power supply fans and all, so there maybe some benefit of just restarting once in awhile but with the cost of electricity it also posts a good argument for shutting down, there is always the convenience factor of having it up but with a windows product it will also crash abunch more if left up because of the general nature of Windows.

Answer 5

I leave mine on for months at a time (or years in the case of Linux) and I don't have issues with the computer "running better" after a boot up.

As for energy use, I turn off the monitors by habit when I leave the room, but whatever I spend on PC energy use, I subtract from my heating bill, and my home office is warm in the morning when I wake up :)

Of course in the summer, I suffer a bit :)

If you left your computer on between now and forever, you would be expected to die before it does.

So this is purely a matter of preference.

Answer 6

Let it hibernate both the monitor and hard drive. Don't unplug the net connection (just don't leave it connected to the internet).

It's almost the same as shutting it down. The power supply will have power to it but no load will be on it.

Answer 7

Yes ever since i started turning mine off it has ran so much better. I use this program to turn it off automaticlly, because i am usually downloading something. I try to turn it off 5 hours before i get home. If you dont play games on it or are in to photoshop and put a lot of strain on it. The computer probably wouldnt care.

Answer 8

Shouldn't be a problem with the network connection unless you are operating on a broadband connection without a firewall. You can either leave it plugged in safely, or not plug it in at all as you are highly susceptible to hacking.

Turning a PC off once in a while is a good thing. I leave my main PC on as I need access to it as a file server, but other PCs I shut down until I need them. It depends on need. And your environmental concerns. And who pays the electric bill.

Answer 9

Yes you should shut it down at night. There is no reason for you to leave it on. It's a waste of energy, and it give the computer a chance to recharge. Sometimes glitches happen when the computer is on too long; happened to me yesterday, one small glitch with the keyboarding. However, if you leave the room for a long period of time, then you should put it to sleep until you get back.
Good luck!

Answer 10

I usually leave mine on at night so it can automatically run the updates and scans while I sleep. Once a week I turn it off completely to make sure everything is properly reset.