Leaving PC on all week

Hi there,

I currently tend to leave my pc on during the trading week and don't turn it off - from Sunday night to Friday night. Basically because I want to check my trades as soon as I get to the pc in a morning and don't want to be waiting for 5 minutes while everything powers up and the programmes load.

Is this likely to cause problems with the pc at all?

However I do turn the monitor off when I leave the desk, so this shouldn't be an issue.

I'm not very techie - so just wondered if anyone out there knew whether I'm harming the pc or not.

Where I used to work they were left on permanently..........They were serviced every 6/9 months...mainly to clear dust out of the cooling vents. I have to say though although I would be happy to leave on my Desktop, I would not leave on a laptop because its a much "denser" piece of equipment with poor ventilation and I dont feel the heat can dissipitate as well.

Most electronic / electrical kit tends to be more reliable if left permamently on - the surge of loading on startup can cause problems. Having said that, if you're only concerned with desktop PC equipment, it is now so reliable that on/off cycles don't seem to make much difference - especially in view of the limited lifetime for which most is retained.

So I think it comes down to: (1) your Green credentials - do you want to save the planet by switching off? - that will also help your wallet. (2) Or do you leave it on and save yourself some hassle & keep someone extra, employed at Powergen or where ever.

When I'm in the house I leave all the kit on for reasons of convenience that you mention; But I always switch off when it's unattended, for safety reasons since i don't have the monitoring protection often present in the industrial / commercial environment.

Hope this helps.

Is this likely to cause problems with the pc at all?

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No but it is currently not PC (politically correct) as it will increase your carbon footprint


Paul

LOL Paul.

You could achieve a light green colour by using Suspend overnight Jilly. That could give you a quick enough restart.

There is the other aspect: Windows needs rebooting every 3 minutes to maintain performance. (Unless you use Unix and X Windows.)

personally i always shut my kit off when I'm finished with it. If your PC lasts 4-5 years (which it should!!) it'll be horribly outdated and you'll want a new one anyway, so leaving it on to save on wear and tear doesn't really add up imo.

Trader333 said:

No but it is currently not PC (politically correct) as it will increase your carbon footprint


Paul

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We're (supposed) to be on nuclear power here - so carbon footprint is a different issue.

We have a cable connection to France for our power - to the nuclear power station at Flamaville. Supposed to be green - but there are different issues with nuclear power in my mind.

Thanks for all your help on this.

Rossored,
Take your point on this - the pc is a 1 year old Dell and I'll probably upgrade it in another year to 18 months - so it should be ok.

I have been leaving mine on continually, for months at a time but turning the monitor off when not in use and have had no problems.

I was told by a techie friend that you can cause more damage if u keep on rebooting the machine.

I think it's a good idea to turn off all energy devices not in use. Everything is going up in price, the fossil fuel argument does not come into it. If everyone kept his computer running continuously, the country would notice the consumption.

Aside from the green issues - as we're all grown up enough to take our own view on those - isn't the problem based on performance? Windows is notoriously bad at reusing memory and things slowly grind to a halt. I need to reboot my PC every now and again (ie once a day) just to clear the RAM and virtual memory to start again. I would be quicker doing things on an abacus than trying to use my PC after it had been left on for a week.

My personal little pecadillo is that I always turn off my wi-fi router overnight so I don't irradiate myself and the kids while we're asleep. Although they could always go to school looking like the ReadyBrek kids of old ...

Mind you, the same effect is presumably available from living downwind of a French nuclear reactor Jilly

JillyB said:

We're (supposed) to be on nuclear power here - so carbon footprint is a different issue.

We have a cable connection to France for our power - to the nuclear power station at Flamaville. Supposed to be green - but there are different issues with nuclear power in my mind.

Thanks for all your help on this.

Rossored,
Take your point on this - the pc is a 1 year old Dell and I'll probably upgrade it in another year to 18 months - so it should be ok.

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Have you considered getting a laptop next time round or a PC with a low power chip... might reduce your electricity bill. The other option is to put your PC on standby while you're not using it - at least then you don't suffer the long boot times and losing your open windows.

Make sure you get an air duster and take your PC outside and give the insides a good squirt at least once a year.

Hoggums said:

Have you considered getting a laptop next time round or a PC with a low power chip... might reduce your electricity bill. The other option is to put your PC on standby while you're not using it - at least then you don't suffer the long boot times and losing your open windows.

Make sure you get an air duster and take your PC outside and give the insides a good squirt at least once a year.

Click to expand...

I have a HP laptop - but it's 4 years old now and only 512mb ram - so not so hot when running trading programmes.

Will have to try leaving main pc on standby - thanks for that and see how I get on.

JillyB said:

I have a HP laptop - but it's 4 years old now and only 512mb ram - so not so hot when running trading programmes.

Will have to try leaving main pc on standby - thanks for that and see how I get on.

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Just to add my 2 pence (maybe some PC expert can correct me)- the only reason I prefer to switch my PC off and on again is because the machine during start up process goes through a BITE (Built in test ) and this helps in (in my view) clearing off the small glitches which sometimes the machine develops while it is on for an extended periood of time.

Raj

rajibde said:

Just to add my 2 pence (maybe some PC expert can correct me)- the only reason I prefer to switch my PC off and on again is because the machine during start up process goes through a BITE (Built in test ) and this helps in (in my view) clearing off the small glitches which sometimes the machine develops while it is on for an extended periood of time.

Raj

Click to expand...

Not true, at least in the hardware sense. POST (power on self test) does do some tests, but in general doesn't 'clear' harware faults in any meaningful sense. Maybe true in the sense of rebooting windows. My Linux machines stay up for a long time, sometimes for months and are rebooted generally though power failures or some misc issue.

I think that power saving is an important issue and it's worth thinking about taking a few practical steps to reduce its consumption.

Here are a couple of articles that explain the issues rather well:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,137328/article.html

http://www.acpi.info/ (download the top pdf if you want chapter & verse on acpi)

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/learnmore/russel_02march25.mspx

New kit is way better than old, Dual Core CPUs are way less power hungary than their predecessors, likewise LCD monitors and the newest range of disks, such as the latest kit from Western Digital, also yield considerable savings:

http://www.westerndigital.com/en/co...elease={B8B1AE34-48A4-481B-89A9-837DD374C8D6}

Besides the system unit, I guess most people will have a couple of monitors, printer(s) and a range of periperal devices that'll normally be left on standby and these can now be powered down intelligently -once the system unit is powered down, everything else follows and is shutdown rather than being left on standby; by using by power strips, e.g, intellipanel from oneclick: http://www.oneclickpower.com/

IMO, it's worth thinking about taking these steps - besides feeling virtuous, it'll certainly save you enough money to pay for some replacement monitors over a year or so.

HTH

Cheers

Mayfly

motherboard on file

About 5 years ago, I found buring smell from my pc through windows is still running on the pc. I switched off the pc and open the case to check. I found one of the capacitor on the motherboard was melting. I changed a new pc the next day.

I don't know whether it would catch fire or not if I was not at home at that time.

After that experience, I tend to turn off the PC before going to sleep and going out.

But I must admit that I leave my pc on most of the time in the last 18 months. Maybe I should be more careful. If it happens once, it can happen again.