Leaving Your Computer On? - is this good for it?

[Inspiron 0]

I've tried before leaving my computer on for 2 days as I was downloading some huge file on a lower broadband speed some years ago. I came back to my computer to find it alot more sluggish and reacts weirdly. There seemed to have many processes running and they would sometime stop and then start again. The CPU was really hot. The mousemove was laggy as well.I rebooted my computer and it was slightly better, but somehow it did not recover from its sluggishness. Just that many processes were then cleared from memory and the computer seemed working faster a little again.Hence I will not recommend leaving your computer on for days. Anyway it will be huge on the bills and there isn't any point there. Unless you are running a server, then you probably didn't have the choice..

[DjMike 0]

Does leaving your computer really kill your energy bills?? I seriously never knew that, I always thought it uses more energry when you turn it on, so is that true? And my mom has always been complaining about the bill was always increasing... and I thought the energy company was being stupid.

Procesor is component that use most of the power in the computer,about 100W for cpu usage 100%,depend on what kind is proc.When computer is booting up it can use 0-100% of proc but that is for a short period.So if ur cpu usage is 0-10% u won't have big bills. If u work with encoding videos and that stuff ur bill will be a little bigger but in all ways electricity is chep.

[ebula 0]

In my view, if you have deep freeze instaled on your machine, you can safely keep a desktop for months. just reboot it before you want to do any e-commerce or may be once a day. I have a celeron 1.2 GHz 384 MB RAM, 160 GB HDD. I made it a server and p2p host running 24x7 for months. no problem. only once power supply unit failed. that is the only risk. for smokers --- please try to clean interior once a month. carbon dust is the most dangerous for motherboards. rest of the components are just fine. use a lightweight AV like NOD32, keep your hdd defragged. & forget about electricity bill if you keep your monitor auto turn-off feature enabled after 5-10 min. your cpu needs 300 watts with 100%cpu useage. average cpu useage for one person is hardly 5% per day. so where comes the question of electricity bill? To check whether your hard disk life is ok (hdd is the only sensitive part in a comp), you can use HDD life pro or Active SMART programs. Good luck.For ACTIVE SMART, HDD Life pro, NOD 32 or Deep Freeze please do a google search..Keep it on and enjoy having your best friend near you always!!

[Welliottdude 0]

Nope. A good restart makes your PC faster, and leaving your PC on for long enough slowly kills the CPU. I play a lot of online games and I find myself restarting every 2-3 hours to achieve max. speed.

[kawasu 0]

you know. at one stage i didnt turn my pc off for around 3 months. i personally didnt have any problem with it. i was just taking advantage of my unlimited downloads lol. well i guess it did get incredibly slow affter a while. thats when i turned it off for a few hours and started it up for a long oeriod of time again. funny though; a month later my cpu, system and video card fans died.

[fffanatics 0]

Turning off your computer is not a bad thing and leaving it on can do damage. However, the problem with leaving the computer on is that Windows is not the best at memory management and you tend to slowly run out of memory because it eats away at itself. Yes, XP is getting better but Linux you could leave on and not have any issues. Therefore, i tend to restart my computer about once a week and i usually just suspend it over night since there really isnt a need for it to be doing anything during those hours. The comment above about how it actually is bad to restart your computer is completely wrong. Computers are made to go on and off all the time and it will not hurt it. It probably helps it cause it allows the hardware to cool down.

[Cool_Freaker 0]

Actually, if you don't worry about paying a bit more on your power bills and are a heavy user of the computer, then I would say leaving it on 24/7 is a good option. The worst part for a computer is the start up when all the components are cold and warm up, and expand, and it's this that usually causes component failure. I would guess starting up and shutting down about twice a day is fine, but anymore than that and I would definitely be inclined to leave on the computer :(The only other thing with leaving on your computer, is, as others have mentioned, the power supply unit can eventually fail, and you may burn out the motors in your fan faster (but usually you'll be wanting a new computer by then, no?). Also it's suceptible to power outages - ie blackouts where your computer is running and the power cuts. That is potentially damaging also.

[cragllo 0]

Heres a little story...My dads friend works as a computer technition for some company. Anway, their server had not been off for a few months. When they had to turn it off to do maintenence, It would not come back on, the reason? Burned out PSU.Thats about it...

[Find3r 0]

not so good, he may over heat and than... ByeBye your motherboard is going to be liquefyed but that only if it become really really hot.

[htdefiant 0]

I put my computer on standby overnight. I have disabled the "display login screen upon wakeup".

[dark_drgn 0]

Leaving your computer on isn?t necessarily a good or bad thing, just depends on what you want to do. Leaving it on may burn out the fan and burn the whole place down, but that?s highly unlikely, get two fans if your worried about that, and yes, while your away or asleep, it heightens the risk of hackers, and viruses. I like to leave my computer on as often as possible, I hate the startup time, even when it?s on hibernate. It will never be fast enough.

[grnjd 0]

Leaving the computer on overnight is not bad. But leaving it on for weeks and months straight is bad because it...I don't know but its bad. My computer slows down if I leave it on for too long, so don't do it. After a while, the computer also starts to get noisey, so thats why I turn it off. Otherwise I almost always leave it on, killing my mom's electric bill...oh well, its not my money

[hulunes 0]

if mac laptop i often close its up cover and leave it.but to pc,i always shutdown before leave for doing other things.i think keeping disk and cpu work are also not a good way,so i never select pc sleeping.shutdown is the best way to keep computer,maybe...

[Nani Cheri 0]

Well I if you worry about your comupter, start worrying about your energy that you have to pay at the end of the month, or your parents!. Did you know that even leaving your monitor on, spills energy? Even leaving your tv on stand-by, you pay for that! Like you music stereo.. or printer! It's true! Just try to always close you computer if you thik you will not be behind your pc for a 15 minutes. It really does safe you alot of money, and if you don't pay you bills, and you still at home, you parents will probably ask what you did because of the bill that is payable this month! hahaha no .. but leaving your pc on is bad for your wallet thats for sure! hahahahhahahaha

[JC05 0]

My friend's PC blew up, because of lack of circulation, the computer room door was kept shut all day and he left it on for 5 days straight without giving it a rest. It started a fire, burnt down most of his house, I'm just glad he's safe now.

Is that really true? I have left my computer on for days with out giveing it a rest. And it still works fine. What part blew up and how did they know it was the computer?