Long hours bad for PC?

[Ransterp]

I have 8 computers in my house ( 1 for each room ) and I leave them on 24/7. It has been 4 years and I only have 1 PS went out on me. One time I was curious how much it costs me to leave them on all the times and borrowed a device from my utiltity company that measure how much electricity a device use. It was a rough estimate ( I assume they all use the same amount of electricity ) but it came out to be $5 a month.

[galactica]

I had a friend ask me recently if leaving your computer on for 5 or 6 days straight is bad for it? I didn't know if it was and I always turn mine off before going to sleep. Is it really bad for Windows or the computer to be one for such a long period?

maybe for windows it could be, but I can tell you my machine has been running 1 year, 1 months, 2 weeks, 4 days and some hours with only being turned off twice (because of power going out) and has only been restarted/rebooted on the occasion of having to have an app installed that requires a restart/reboot.

I have no problems.

[gmatov]

All you Apple guys do is brag, brag, brag. Never commiserate with us poor Windows pipple.

Have to go back to Linux, well, you're kinda on Unix, just different flavour.

Have fun, Galactica. Quit beatin' up on us. Next ver of windows is "guaranteed" to run forever, or till it crashes.

Cheers,

George

[redwudz]

Gotta add my 2cents. The best system, IMHO, is a PC that uses a STR (Suspend to RAM) system and I think this is a good compromise. The power supply keeps the RAM in the state it was when you last used it. Unfortunatelly this doesn't seem to work properly on most computers. When it works right the PS keeps just the ram running and the PS fan and drives shut down. Instant start, right where you left off. Also most new monitors go to a low power mode and you don't really need to shut them off. Heat is really the big killer of computers and monitors. If your monitor runs cold when in standby and your computer PS is cold in STR, that seems to be a good system. Even in standby mode most newer machines shut down the HD and your power usage is minimal. I like an instant boot and this is one thing that I think most users would like to have.

[iooi]

Running 24/7/365 with no problems using XP for well over a year now.
No screen savers or suspending of drives if i ain't sat in front of the computer the monitor is turned off by its switch on the front...

[galactica]

All you Apple guys do is brag, brag, brag. Never commiserate with us poor Windows pipple.

Have to go back to Linux, well, you're kinda on Unix, just different flavour.

Have fun, Galactica. Quit beatin' up on us. Next ver of windows is "guaranteed" to run forever, or till it crashes.

Cheers,

George

I was not beating up on anyone. Not sure how you got that idea. I read some of these other replies and people have been running for A LOT long than i have with out turning their comptuer off.

from my experience, with my pc, the more i turn the thing on and off and on and off i get windows related errors. Blue screen of death type of things.. I have never seen system related errors that i can say have happend because i turn my mac on and off and on and off.

not trying to brag, not trying to say BUY A MAC OR DIE! just saying what it is for me.

[mrtristan]

I would leave my computer on for days, but this room gets hotter than hell and it eats a lot of power.

I usually turn on my computer when I get home and leave it on until I know I won't be using it for the rest of the night. Actually, I usually just let it run until I'm going to go to bed. I also leave it on for overnight encodes. There might be a way to turn it off during overnighters, but I haven't figured it out yet. I also leave it running during the weekend and when I know I'll be doing something in the morning, before I leave for work.

[John James]

The computer does need to re-start every now then even though on 24/7.

The computer ages from day one so it doesn't matter if the machine is left on around the clock or turned off nighly.

Anyway, the computer got a short life of 5 years or get out of date very quickly. A new computer would be part of me at every 2nd year or so.

[gmatov]

Galactica,

Good grief!!!

Smilies, quotes, I hope you can tell I was kidding.

Especially the line with "the next ver of Win is "Guaranteed" to not crash", as MS itself says that, at least the older versions, 98, 95, HAVE to be rebooted after 44 days XX hours.

Kinda puts the kibosh on those few guys who have bragged their 98 machine has run 2 years without a reboot.

I am not a Mac people. Can you actually kill a hung process in Mac as yiou mostly can with Linux. The vers of Linux I have used will almost always recover without a reboot, whereas I have had to do a hard reboot of Win thousands of times, literally.

Cheers,

George

[John James]

Galactica,

Good grief!!!

Smilies, quotes, I hope you can tell I was kidding.

Especially the line with "the next ver of Win is "Guaranteed" to not crash", as MS itself says that, at least the older versions, 98, 95, HAVE to be rebooted after 44 days XX hours.

Kinda puts the kibosh on those few guys who have bragged their 98 machine has run 2 years without a reboot.

My Win98 computer needs to re-boot so many times more than Win2k. This is due to errors, the freeze, networking problems and for whatever reason the computer stalls. It just can't handle too much on a low 380 Mhz cpu.

This computer is near its end at 5 years old and this one will be gone soon.