Preventive & Regular Maintenance

General
Article Last Reviewed April 2006

Leave It On Or Shut It Down

If you want to save energy yet keep your WinXP computer in a fast-access state, you can use the Standby or Hibernate modes.
History is full of puzzling questions that always seem to elude answers that will satisfy all of humankind. There’s that bit with the chicken and that egg,
for example. In the world of computers, there’s a similar conundrum: Should you leave your computer on when you’re not using it? Leave it running all the
time? Shut it down in the evening? Life is full of perplexing issues such as this.

 Fire It Up

When people ask this question, they’re generally weighing the benefits of saving money on electricity versus wear-and-tear on PC components. For years,
many pundits have claimed that continually shutting down and restarting your computer more quickly wears out the power switch, drive motors, and other
components.

Most importantly, according to advocates of the leave-it-on theory, starting up a cold computer puts extra stress on the read/write heads inside the hard
drive. This advice may have been very useful with older drives, but newer hard drives use safer processes for spinning up the hard drive after a break.

Some PC users also worry that the stress of heating up components and then letting them cool down again can cause premature failure. It’s true that some
PC parts expand as they warm and then contract as they cool; repeating this cycle several times throughout the day may very well cause more wear than leaving
a computer on all the time.

 Wasted Power

As far as electricity usage is concerned, modern PCs don’t consume much power. Nonetheless, there’s no doubt that you’ll save some cash by shutting down
overnight and when you’re gone during the weekends. The components in your case do require a large surge of electricity when you first start up the machine,
but that burst of energy consumption won’t offset the cost savings you’ll see by shutting down on a regular basis.

There are other advantages to turning off your computer a few times per week. Keep in mind that every time you restart your PC, your operating system flushes
out older files that it’s not currently using. Not only does this reduce file clutter on your hard drive and in RAM, it may even provide noticeable performance
boosts.

Those who argue against leaving a computer running constantly often note that if you use an always-on broadband connection, turning off your PC means no
one can attempt to hack into your data. Although there’s some truth to this argument, those who lean on this idea too heavily might not be taking proper
precautions to protect their computers with the use of firewall and antivirus software.

A better argument might center on power problems. Leaving your computer on all the time leaves your data at a higher risk of damage due to blackouts, brownouts,
and power surges. If you invest in a high-quality UPS (uninterruptible power supply), though, you can reduce these problems and shut down your computer
in a controlled manner.

 The Middle Ground

If you’re not sure which path to take to PC power enlightenment, you might want to strike a balance between shutting down every time you exit your computer
room and leaving your machine running at all times. When you know you’ll be away for more than a couple of hours, or before you go to sleep, go ahead and
shut down.

Shutting down, of course, may conflict with one of the other primary reasons that people leave their computers on, complete with running programs—convenience.
Nothing beats sitting down to a computer that’s all ready to go at the moment you need it. If a complete shutdown doesn’t appeal to you, you can also use
your system’s Hibernate or Standby modes, which consume little electricity, yet let you restore your computer to a ready state much more quickly than a
cold startup.