How often do you shutdown your iMac?

Mine is on all the time.

I only ever switch it off when I go on holiday as the wife goes around the house and pulls all the plugs out of the walls before we leave. I prefer it to be off before she gets to my office.

Mine has been up for 9 minutes! Just got finished installing a new surge protector . Now it'll be up for YEARS!

The last reboot on my 27" was June 2010.

I used to turn it off every night but leave it on 24/7 now although it does put itself to sleep & wake for network access.

Beside the times when I need to reboot it for a software update, almost never.

Only times when I shut it down is when by the end of the day I am booted in Windows, I will turn it off instead of rebooting it back to OSX.
The only other time beside that is when I am leaving my home for awhile.

It wears down components leaving it on all the time. Why leave it on?

Not usually, only when I am gone for a few days because of possible power outages. I typically just let it sleep.

musio said:

It wears down components leaving it on all the time. Why leave it on?

Click to expand...

I think turning on and off wears down the components more.

My Mac Air I never turn off, along with my iPad, as they are my go to devices. But my iMac I only turn on when I need it as I maybe use it twice a week.

Only when my APC is on the fritz and the power goes out, LAST NIGHT!!! Doh

I only use it for a few hours each night so I turn it off once I am done. I have always turned off my computers once I'm done using them for the night.

gCloud said:

I think turning on and off wears down the components more.

Click to expand...

I have to agree, but sometimes I ask myself if coming back from sleep mode does wear the hardware in the same sense like booting.

When we talk about wear and tear, it's about temperature or better termal stress.

I never shut down my MBP. When it comes back from sleep, the CPU temperature rises from "zero" (think that the components are 18°C - room temperature) to 25°C and after 5 minutes it reaches 35°C.

Is this not the same temperature rising like booting?

i think if you have a ssd or fusion drive and you don't need the mac you can shut down it runs quick off quick on, i think is no need to stay in idle for too long, you save some energy etc. If you have a standard hdd 5400 or 7200 rpm i think you can let it sleep but i think the waking up is the same time like a properly off on ? On my macbook air ssd i always turn it off and when i need it turn on because i have to wait only 13-14 sec. For a computer that takes like normal over 30-40 sec, yea i let it on all the time almost

SanJacinto said:

I have to agree, but sometimes I ask myself if coming back from sleep mode does wear the hardware in the same sense like booting.

When we talk about wear and tear, it's about temperature or better termal stress.

I never shut down my MBP. When it comes back from sleep, the CPU temperature rises from "zero" (think that the components are 18°C - room temperature) to 25°C and after 5 minutes it reaches 35°C.

Is this not the same temperature rising like booting?

Click to expand...

I dont know if what I do is good or bad, but with desktops where battery life is no issue, I set sleep to never, I only set turn off display after 5 mins.