Weekend Open Forum: Do you turn your PC off at night?

Shawn Knight

Posts: 15,240   +192
Staff member

For years we have heard the pros and cons regarding turning off your computer each night. Those in favor of the practice usually point to energy savings as their main reason for doing so. The trend of “going green” is no longer new but it’s hard to turn a cold shoulder to saving money, especially in this economy.

Those who are concerned with security point out that leaving your computer connected to the Internet unattended could make you vulnerable to attacks, however unlikely it may be. If you live in a small space like a college dorm room or keep your PC in your bedroom, leaving it powered on at all times will certainly add more heat to your surroundings – not very desirable during summer months.

Sure, you could set your PC up to go into hibernation mode to conserve energy and eliminate heat output, but several people complain that their computer behaves differently after coming out of hibernation and a full reboot is needed to remedy the situation.

Those who are against shutting down daily point to a long-running belief that booting and rebooting is hard on components and should be avoided as often as possible. Others run software in the background 24/7 like Bit Torrent clients of Folding @ Home. Some users simply want to gauge how stable their system is by measuring how long it can keep running before a reboot is necessary.

So, what’s your take on the subject? Do you typically shut down your system(s) at night or leave everything running for days, weeks or even months at a time? We’d love to hear your reasons in the comments below!

Image via LHF Graphics / Shutterstock

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I honestly don't remember the last time I turned my PC off overnight. Even when I'm away on vacation I keep it on so I can assess it remotely. I reboot it as needed to apply updates, but otherwise it stays on all the time.
 
From monday to friday I leave my office PC on sleep mode, on fridays I turn it off, it's always good to start on monday with a clean desktop :)

I always turn off my home pc / laptop, although I will try today the hibarnate mode, and see if I get used to it.
 
I have two old iMacs that I run F@H on 24/7 and use if I need to quickly look something up, but they are very quiet and low power. I always hibernate my main desktop if I won't be using it for more than a few hours, or put it to sleep if I will need it again sooner. Since it is in my bedroom, it is just too noisy for me to leave it running at night (not to mention the heat and wasted energy).
 
I live Off-the-Grid so power is very dear. I make do with 3KWHrs per day.
I turn off my computer when I get up to go to breakfast. I turn off my computer a least five time a day, often ten. So Windows 8's promise of faster booting is high on my want list.
 
I turn my system off every night. I've never been big on hibernation modes and I don't want my cat stepping all over the keyboard doing who knows what kind of damage lol
 
i put mine in standby when not used during the day and turn it off fully overnight
 
I am always downloading at night, and when I am in bed I always fall asleep watching a movie, or listening to music. So I require my PC being turned on 24/7
 
I turn it off every night, and also during the day when not in use. An SSD boot with Windows 7 isn't very time consuming anyways.
 
I sleep the laptop and hibernate the desktops unless there is a reason not to. They both come up fast, and neither seem to have any hiccups from it.
One peeve tho is I use a USB KVM switch to use the laptop and desktop between a large flatpanel and a wireless rollerball keyboard. If I let the desktop come out of hibernation before I let the laptop out of sleep, the DT takes over the KVM priority and messes up the extended desktop settings. I guess the point is, depending upon what hardware you are running, their may be a difference between how each powersave mode treats your USB bus when it's in 'off' mode...

All of it is still lightyears ahead of the windows 3.1 days, disc OS's, etc. LONG boot times when you couldn't tell if the machine is actually doing anything besides hanging. How soon we forget.
 
With the cost of energy nowadays (recent price rise of almost 20% here) and the fact that I have an SSD in my rig means that I power off every night. Different story at work though - still on XP with dual core processor and mechanical hard drive... plus that's not using my electricity
 
Sometimes I turn it off. Sometimes not.
(http://codedincantation.com/blog/)
 
I'm surprised that so many people leave their computers on!
I turn mine off when I'm not using it. That can be a couple times a day.
 
I always turn my PC off when I go to sleep. I find it unnecessary to leave my PC on as I can simply just turn it back on in the morning. Overnight, I usually can't sleep if my PC is on due to noise, heat, as well as lights in my PC. >.>
 
I run with all power management features enabled and have the system set to sleep after 30 minutes. Just takes a few seconds to restore the desktop, definitely quicker than a full boot up sequence. When going out of town I power down completely and pull the plug on the power supply just in case of lightning.
 
KingSingh
on October 28, 2011
8:06 PM I always turn my PC off when I go to sleep. I find it unnecessary to leave my PC on as I can simply just turn it back on in the morning. Overnight, I usually can't sleep if my PC is on due to noise, heat, as well as lights in my PC. >.>

Someone always says this and it makes me think... How small is your room ffs!
 
Set mine to sleep after 2 hrs. Even with an SSD, no need to fully shut down.
 
Power is undependable where I live in Mexico. If I'm not there to attend to it, I turn off the machine. My UPS is only good for about 10 minutes, long enough to save any work and outlast the fairly frequent hiccups in service, and I'd rather monitor the shutdown than leave it to my software UPS oversight program. Dang newfangled gadgets.
 
i turn it off every night then turn it on in the early morning, i use it then turn it off in a bit to go to school then turn it on and keep it on all day except when not using it i let it sleep
 
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