Shutting down vs sleep

[PacMookBro]

Unless it's required (esp. after updates) or frozen, why bother shutting it down? My MBP has SSD and boots up freaking fast but I don't. It's still a waste of time.

I visited my parents to discover that they never updated their MBA's even if there are tons of updates available and they always closed the lid to sleep. Gave them no problems. One of theirs holds the record of 6 months until recent Mountain Lion Upgrade I installed for them. Anyone longer?

 

[SlyMac]

Today I received my very first Mac, a rMBP. I am in love with it, despite having to google pretty much everything - it can be a rather large learning curve!

Anyway, since I've only ever owned Windows PCs and laptops I was always taught to shut them down every evening. But do I need to do this now or should I just put my MBP to sleep? What do you guys do?

I'd say its a 60/40 split for me. I shut down more often than I sleep my mac. If I know I need to do something in the morning, I'll sleep it. If I don't plan on using it when i get up, I shut it down.

 

[haruhiko]

It depends. If I'm DEAD SERIOUS about battery life at the moment, it's going to shutdown. But if it's just a visit to Starbucks, it's sleep. If it's just an other torrent download, the display's sleeping, but the computer isn't.

They should make uTorrent compatible with Power Nap.

I usually turn on the NoSleep utility when I need to download something over night.

 

[EwanMcTeagle]

Unlike most of the posters here, I shut down 90% of the time. Maybe it's a habit from my Windows times - if I used to keep my PC on for 3, 4 days straight, then it was quite luggish after that and I had to restart/shut down and it's just a natural reflex for me to shut down my MBPs when I'm done working or playing around.
Nevertheless I've noticed that, just as you guys said, "sleeping over" doesn't affect MBPs performance that much if at all thus I try to remember to keep my "desktop" 15" asleep and on a battery for the night, so that the juices keep flowing.

 

[theuserjohnny]

On my old Macbook I would just put it to sleep but since the bootup times on the rMBP are crazy fast I just shut it down.