Do you leave your iMac on 24/7? or turn off at night

[Razorhog]

I leave it on 24/7. No sleep. I do put the display to sleep when I walk away though. I set up the top left corner as a hot corner that sleeps the display. So I just swipe the mouse pointer to that corner as I get up and it goes off

[braddicted2mac]

Originally Posted by torana355

I use mine as a media server and i always have torrents running on it.

be careful with the torrents runnign on it all the time.. They are starting to crack down on that in Canada won't be long till they crack down on Australia !

[mchoffa]

Originally Posted by lucasfunkt

I've never taken more than 2 minutes to shut down a computer. You're current one must be ancient.

2008 24 inch with 4GB ram, 2.4GHz core 2
I usually run photoshop, illustrator, chrome with 20+ tabs, safari, skype, and some other small web/app dev apps... just to close chrome on that machine would take a good 3-4 minutes of spinning beach ball (I have it set to reopen current tabs on next reload). My ram was always maxed out, usually showing 10-50 MB available at any given time, but at some points it would grind down to 1-2 MB free and that's when I had trouble. Sometimes I had to close chrome and reopen it just to free up some ram (btw, Chrome is TERRIBLE at using resources and not freeing them back up, but it's so much faster for everything else)

Now on the 2012 I have the same workflow, but I can also open aperture (with all 30,000 photos) and premiere while all of that stuff is open and it doesn't even lag.

[LaunchpadBS]

Wait...what...you can turn them off??? haha my MBP stays on all the time, even when travelling

[gagaliya]

Originally Posted by torana355

I think the OP is asking if people just sleep the display, not the iMac itself.

yeah i am really asking if people leave imac running 24/7 with sleep = never setting for the computer, looks like some do but only a very minority, and most leave it in sleep mode.

[lucasfunkt]

Perhaps a better question is do you leave your mouse/trackpad and keyboard on when you're not using them and overnight?

These have batteries in them which presumably you'll need to replace/recharge more regularly if you leave them on all the time. Or is it too much hassle to keep turning these off and on too?

[davidra]

About to spring for a new 2012: I leave my computers on all the time; this is my first Mac. Glad to see others do that as well. However, if you do leave it on all the time, is there much benefit to getting a fusion drive?

[Arman]

I use the sleep function. With fusion, the iMac wakes backup within seconds so very convenient.

[oldgeezer]

My 2008 24" stayed on 24/7 as will my new 27". I use it to route mail to our IOS devices so we can take advantage on iCloud syncing so it has to be on.

Besides, I believe electronics last longer if not subjected to the repeated heating and cooling from being shut down and restarted.

[tom vilsack]

Mine's in room where i sleep sometimes,so at night i turn it off...not had any issues with turning on and off...using for years.

[WrrN]

I never turn off but set to sleep after 1hr.

There was a detailed post somewhere that went into the benefits of not turning it off every day. The reasoning was to do with component level wear, as repeated start-ups would push slight overages of voltage into some components, causing them to fail sooner than just leaving the unit running. I wonder if this applies to sleep mode too.
[shrug]

[southerndoc]

Just got a new 3.4 GHz i7 iMac. Absolutely love it, and much much faster than my 2008 C2D 2.4 GHz iMac.

How much power does the iMac use during idle? I'm curious because I've thought of leaving mine on 24/7 so I can print from my iPad/iPhone with Printopia.

[BSoares]

Originally Posted by southerndoc

Just got a new 3.4 GHz i7 iMac. Absolutely love it, and much much faster than my 2008 C2D 2.4 GHz iMac.

How much power does the iMac use during idle? I'm curious because I've thought of leaving mine on 24/7 so I can print from my iPad/iPhone with Printopia.

I have my i5 2012 27" iMac on a Kill-A-Watt now. With the machine on but screen off I see about 30W usage. With the screen on and light usage I see something between 60W and 80W. I haven't really pushed it to the point where the computer would demand more power but I'd assume it probably doesn't get much higher than 100W.

I have mine on 24x7 now and will check the total used in a couple of weeks to see if I want to keep it that way or schedule sleeps between midnight and 6am, for example. I don't need it on during the night but during the day we do as we have a couple of Apple TVs in the house and also do a lot of streaming from the Mac so it stays on all day.

[teddyofindy]

isn't that when leaving the mac on all the time, it supposed to reduce the life of the hard drive. when the last HDD failed on my imac, I was told by someone. Now I turn off my iMac most of the days before bed. my was a late 2006 imac

[fhall1]

My Mid-2009 iMac was on 24/7 from the time I got it in Aug 2009 to Nov 2012 (when my 2012 Mini arrived) except for any power outages that may have occured due to storms....no ill effects or HD problems.

[b1scu1t]

I use this s/w to put my mac to sleep during much of the day and reboot it once a week. It is pricey, but it works perfectly and has a # of options to customize.

http://www.dssw.co.uk/powermanager/

I do use wol to turn it on if needed.

[Kadath]

Anyone having issues with their 27" not staying asleep? I am, think the issue might be with the external USB hub. I have it set to sleep even through network traffic and every 30 seconds or so it wakes up, the usb hub lights up, the fans breathe for a few seconds, then goes back to sleep.

Haven't tried sleeping it without the hub attached, will try that tonight.

[Paul-B]

My new late 2012 iMac 27 is set to sleep after 1 hour. But it has trouble waking up (like the owner).

The screen open in plain white and the cursor leaves a trail over it revealing a login screen and I have to login with my password before it will wake. But it does not require a password to boot up.

Also when it wakes, all open programs are quit, except email which opens at boot up.

Obviously my setting are wrong. But which??

[harcosparky]

I turn mine off at night.

Last time I left it turned on, I was awakened by loud music.

Went down to investigate and that damned iMac turned on the room lights, the disco ball, fired up iTunes and had the iPad, iPod Touch, and iPhone dancing on the desk.

It was throwing it's own little APPLE FEST at my expense!


In all honesty, I leave mine on. I have Hot Corners setup so when I walk away I start up the screensaver and it requires the password to get back on.

[torana355]

Originally Posted by Razorhog

I leave it on 24/7. No sleep. I do put the display to sleep when I walk away though. I set up the top left corner as a hot corner that sleeps the display. So I just swipe the mouse pointer to that corner as I get up and it goes off

haha same but mine is set to the top right

----------

Originally Posted by braddicted2mac

be careful with the torrents runnign on it all the time.. They are starting to crack down on that in Canada won't be long till they crack down on Australia !

My ISP does not monitor P2P activity. I use a seedbox now anyway

[lucasfunkt]

Originally Posted by Paul-B

My new late 2012 iMac 27 is set to sleep after 1 hour. But it has trouble waking up (like the owner).

The screen open in plain white and the cursor leaves a trail over it revealing a login screen and I have to login with my password before it will wake. But it does not require a password to boot up.

Also when it wakes, all open programs are quit, except email which opens at boot up.

Obviously my setting are wrong. But which??

In System Preferences go to Security and Privacy and you can set it to require a password; Immediately, 5 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 1 hour, 4 hours after going to sleep.

Mine goes to sleep after about 17 minutes of inactivity but I have it so I only have to re-enter my password if it's been in sleep for an hour or more.

[BSoares]

Originally Posted by Kadath

Anyone having issues with their 27" not staying asleep? I am, think the issue might be with the external USB hub. I have it set to sleep even through network traffic and every 30 seconds or so it wakes up, the usb hub lights up, the fans breathe for a few seconds, then goes back to sleep.

Haven't tried sleeping it without the hub attached, will try that tonight.

Mine did that when I had Wake on LAN enabled. Turned that off and it never did it again. But it wasn't often like you're saying, happened once an hour or two.

[BlueEagle]

I leave my iMac on 24/7. The only gets turned off when the power goes off. I feel it's better to keep computers on then turn them off constantly, it's probably just a mental thing.

[Johnf1285]

Originally Posted by southerndoc

Just got a new 3.4 GHz i7 iMac. Absolutely love it, and much much faster than my 2008 C2D 2.4 GHz iMac.

How much power does the iMac use during idle? I'm curious because I've thought of leaving mine on 24/7 so I can print from my iPad/iPhone with Printopia.

My 21.5" uses about 7watts idle with the screen off (typically with no programs open too).

Speaking of power consumption, I've never seen it get over 60watts while gaming. This is probably the heaviest load I throw at my machine. All the work I do on it is on the lower end of the computing spectrum.

I do keep my brightness at halfway though. Bumping it up to 100% tacks on another 10watts. It's a 2012 GT650m with Fusion.

[iHailCarlo]

If I'm gone for extended period of time like 3 days or more I will shut it down. Otherwise I usually put it to sleep.