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Are you supposed to turn off your computer at night?

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provoloney

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 17, 2008
22
0
I never turn off my old macbook. At night or when I'm not using it I just close it and it goes to sleep. Is this bad? With my old pc, I used to turn it off periodically, but that's b/c it would start having all kinds of bugs if I didn't periodically restart.

Just wondering if I'm harming the mac by doing this.
 
The only time I turn my computer off is if I am going on a trip and not taking my laptop. Other than that, sleep! Think of sleep as a type of "off".
 
Awesome. This, in itself, is an awesome advantage of macs over pcs. It's been a while, but if I remember correctly, this would never work on a pc.
 
provoloney said:
Awesome. This, in itself, is an awesome advantage of macs over pcs. It's been a while, but if I remember correctly, this would never work on a pc.
Click to expand...
PC's sleep too. No problem.
Personally, I always shut down at night because it only takes 4 seconds.
It saves battery or electricity.
 
Yeah I sleep mine almost always, although SL did make shutdowns almost instant...and my macbook is starting to take a while to go into sleep mode. I'd rather wait for it to sleep than wait for it to turn on/wake up though.
 
i don't put mine into "sleep" per se. Rather, i just leave it on, and then it will go to sleep.
 
I disagree with what seems to be the consensus here.

I ALWAYS turn my Macs off at night, unless for some rare reason when they need to be left on.

That way, when rebooted the next morning, they literally "start out fresh". I don't want anything "hanging over" from the day before.

It seems to have kept this old g4 healthy. It's still running on the original system software installation from 2004. Although it's been upgraded to 10.3.9 using Software Update, I have never had the need to do a "full reinstallation" of the System. It just runs.

I also go against the conventional wisdom by defragmenting and optimizing the g4's internal drives from time to time. Works for me.

- John
 
This seems to be much more an american thing (to leave it in sleep status at night).. I turn it off since I'm not using it and it's not wasting any electricity.. Do the same, every little bit helps.
 
Hi,
for me, i always shut my mbp down when i'm done.
saves a little bit of juice and i don't mind waiting 1 minute for mbp to start up in the next day.

sleep mode is occasional, such as in middle of presentation where i need to take a break and later will be resuming.
 
always shut down.
and with the way the world is going with us pollution the earth lately how can you leave it on? i know that it consumes next to nothing when it's in sleep. but multiply that by how many people would leave it on sleep and it does add up.... every little bit here and there makes a big difference.....do your part.
 
I only ever turn it off when I go on holiday.


It seems ridiculous to me to always be turning a laptop on and off, you want to use it, you open it and go. You don't want to use it, you close the lid. Done, no waiting.
 
I'd be interested to know if macs actually ran better having been left on, i.e warmed up or something. At the moment I turn mine off at night, but up for persuasion
 
iWright said:
I'd be interested to know if macs actually ran better having been left on, i.e warmed up or something. At the moment I turn mine off at night, but up for persuasion
Click to expand...
It shouldn't make a significant difference in most cases, aside from the startup/shutdown times. It does help to occasionally quit programs - particularly web browsers - to free up some RAM again. A number of programs have small, slow memory leaks (again, particularly some web browsers!) that are cleared up after the program is restarted.

I do whatever I feel like on a whim when I go to bed. Sometimes the laptop goes into sleep, sometimes I just flip it off. Usually flip it off if the battery's low, though.
 
I put my MBP to sleep at night, but if I had animals that were roaming about at night I'd shut it down, just in case their rowdy behavior caused it to fall. I'm pretty sure it would be better off to be shut down than in sleep mode if it was dropped or knocked off the desk.
 
I turn my MBP off every night unless I'm downloading something big. If I don't turn if off, I notice slowness in applications. For me a filmmaker, shutting down is done nearly every night.
 
provoloney said:
Awesome. This, in itself, is an awesome advantage of macs over pcs. It's been a while, but if I remember correctly, this would never work on a pc.
Click to expand...

talk about an uninformed fanboy

I put my laptop/desktop on hibernate when I go to sleep
 
I shut down at night and turn on while I am making coffee. For a while I had it so the computer automatically came on at a certain time in the morning. That was nice but my husband reset that when I went on vacation and I haven't set it back to do that again.
 
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