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upsguy27

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jun 25, 2007
1,210
19
Utah
Is it okay to leave my MacBook running overnight? Like, plugged in, screensaver? Are MacBooks meant to be run for long periods of time? (Say, a month without turning it off) I kept my iMac on for 2 years straight and it was just fine. The reason I want to leave it on is so I can rip DVDs, or download torrents overnight so their ready in the morning. Is it okay to do this?
 
Okay, that's good. Do you have a screensaver running?

I usually leave mine running 24-7, but i turn off the screen (press control+shift+eject) or set it to sleep after a minute or so.

I do this with both my macbook and ibook and have had no problems at all.
 
My sister turns hers off once every two months or so...other than that, shes either on it or just leaves it on while she is out
 
I am considering to leave my macbook running 24x7x365 as a desktop server.

I wonder though about dust buildup inside, although it should not be a problem, and if the fan burns out.

I could open the case once per year, for cleaning maintenance. I assume if a component dies or overheats, the macbook will shutdown (and hopefully not cause a fire).
 
I doubt running downloads overnight will do much harm, but I used to run BOINC on my MacBook 24/7 and I’ve had the fan replaced twice. Be careful.
 
Just set the screen to turn off, I'm not sure why people even use screensavers any more.
 
Just set the screen to turn off, I'm not sure why people even use screensavers any more.

I like looking at various images of my family scrolling around the screen, its a nice "picture frame" when I'm doing nothing on my computer
 
I turn down the brightness so my screen turns off. It's set to turn off after a set amount of time, but this way, if before I go to sleep, I want to change a podcast or a song, I can just turn up the brightness. I'm assuming turning the screen on and off a lot will wear it out more than just moving the brightness.

I don't keep mine on all night though, it usually goes to sleep after the podcast is over, or I use a widget to put it to sleep after a set amount of time.
 
How do y'all install updates that require restarts?

Or are you not counting those as turning it off?

Yeah - that's not a shut down for the sake of turning it off. It's a reboot. ;)

Like others, I just close the lid and snooze my MBP. I don't ever power it off. The only time it's powered off is if I drain the battery and then snooze it when it's really low.
 
Yeah - that's not a shut down for the sake of turning it off. It's a reboot. ;)

Like others, I just close the lid and snooze my MBP. I don't ever power it off. The only time it's powered off is if I drain the battery and then snooze it when it's really low.

Ahh, ok, that makes sense. In that case, mine has been on for over two months. I turned it off when I moved. I thought y'all were going by the uptime...mine's at 14 days.
 
Nah reboots count as resetting the uptime in my eyes. Record for my win7/vista machine was like 13 days or something
 
if you want your torrents/programs to continue running with the display to sleep, just press shift+ctrl+eject button and you'll be good!

This is different than just turning the display to 0 brightness ;)
 
My MacBook (early 2009) has never been turned off since I turned it on for the very first time. The only times I had to power off were the times when the OS froze completely and I had to hold down the power button to reboot.

When I take it around I just close the screen to go into standby, and at night I just leave it on idle.

My longest uptime is around 40+ days when 10.6.3 came out, but recently I've been having a strange problem where it would stop doing name lookups every 1-2 days and I have to reboot to get things working again.
 
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