Shutting down PC at night

[scott1120]

Interesting article and comments. I didn't think they used much electricity, I always had heard it was due to expansion and contraction of the cpu being turned on/off.

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/14848

[kenw]

that pretty well matches my experience (25 years in computer design and mfg). Standby or hibernate is usually the best choice unless it will be known ahead of time that it will be days before you come back (like vacation).

leaving it on also adds heat to the room, which your AC then has to get rid of. Again, not much but it adds up.

[Gleep]

That article makes sense. I started shutting my PC down in March but it was for a different reason. I decided to upgrade in March and switched from a system with an ancient Athlon processor to one with a P4. The new system has the largest and brightest power LED I've ever seen. It's bright enough to cast a very distinct shadow on the blinds across the room. If you put it in standby mode the light flashes. The flash is too slow for a strobe effect but since it's in my bedroom...

It's good to know I might be adding a little life to the hard drives.

[jerrykr]

I have automatic security updates from M$ scheduled for something like 3 am. Not a good idea these days and times to miss them with all the bad guys out there on the whacky wide web. mine stays on 24/7.

I also have the CPU on a small UPS, not to make it last thru a power outage, but for the graceful shutdown command from the UPS when it loses grid power. Got it on sale for around $40.

It hibernates to save a little bit of electricity. The Monitor goes dark after a timeout.

In the dark, it looks like LED city over in the corner with all the devices on. ;^)

[scott1120]

So in hibernate security patches can still download? if that is the case I might have to try that.

[jerrykr]

I get those messages that patches were loaded and even required a reboot.

I'm not an expert at this.

Looks like it worked.

[Daniel Bates]

I put mine on hibernate when I'm not using it. It's easy, since mine is a laptop.

[rcheli1]

I keep mine on 24/7 mostly so it can sync my photos to the server at night and to avoid waiting for it to boot when I want to use it. Nowdays I don't think it matters much either way.

[Arnor]

Hi Scott,

Originally Posted by scott1120

Interesting article and comments. I didn't think they used much electricity, I always had heard it was due to expansion and contraction of the cpu being turned on/off.

I've been using PCs for 19 years. Always turn them off at night. Never had problems, never lost a MB, drive or CPU. I have a 9 year old laptop (P2 with 128MB of ram win98) that works great.

I have automatic updates on in XP. If there are updates to install it downloads and installs before turning off. What I hate is when XP decides that it needs the update now and it does a hard reboot without asking! Have lost work that way twice in the past year.

Best regards,

[LoungeLizard]

Twenty five years in the computer industry. Using PCs since the IBM PC XT. Always shut down at the end of the day.

Having worked on operating system design/architecture, I can tell you that for the "most part" standby and hibernate should work - and it is getting better - but that state is only as good as your worst behaved device driver! See, the operating system (XP whatever) sends messages to all those drivers to save their state. During resume, they're all supposed to restore their state to where they were. All it takes is one little bit to be off and BANG...

And Scott...during hibernate NOTHING processes.

[Arnor]

Hi Jesus,

I rarely use hibernate but when I have it has worked without problems. If I'm not mistaken some things can wake the PC up from hibernation (seem to have seen that stated about some backup software - but that may have been hardware related stuff) - any comments on that?

Best regards,

[kenw]

fwiw, hibernate is darn close to off, it writes the RAM info and such (anything volatile) to the hard drive and shuts down. On a notebook, it is used to speed up restart, and can run in hibernate on a battery for days or even weeks.

Not as sure how it works on a desktop.

Standby keeps RAM up and most critical circuits powered up, so pulls more juice.

Some units can be configured to restart from standby upon an external signal from a network, modem, etc. (used it back in the 1200 baud modem days myself on 386/20 notebooks).

Don't see how anything would wake up a unit in (true) hibernation as all the I/O are shutdown. Perhaps some hibernations aren't as deep as others?

[tommas4]

I have my monitor set to go stand by after 10 minutes, turn off after another 10.
PC is set to "park" HD's after 10 minutes and hibernate after 20 minutes.
If I'm on computer, using it, well - then I use it. When I do just browse, why use everything? (stand by HD's with data).
Only my theory, but seems to work.
Oh, and updates? Say you leave for work at 7:40 . . .but looking at weather and news before that or just browse some forums . . .so set them to 7:45 . . .while you are gone, but pc still fully up and running.

T

[AlexMorse]

My macs automatically sleep at night unless I set them not to. They do have a slowly fading in and out led telling me they're asleep instead of off, but they also have an ambient light sensor so that it's very very dim in a darkened room, and bright in a lit one.

[scott1120]

how do you access hibernate?

Originally Posted by LoungeLizard

Twenty five years in the computer industry. Using PCs since the IBM PC XT. Always shut down at the end of the day.

Having worked on operating system design/architecture, I can tell you that for the "most part" standby and hibernate should work - and it is getting better - but that state is only as good as your worst behaved device driver! See, the operating system (XP whatever) sends messages to all those drivers to save their state. During resume, they're all supposed to restore their state to where they were. All it takes is one little bit to be off and BANG...

And Scott...during hibernate NOTHING processes.