so i was talking to a friend of mine. He explained that everytime you power on a computer, it sends an electrical shock to all of the components, and that degrades the system over time. I was tired of waiting to boot every morning, so for the last 4 nights i have been putting it to sleep at night. No problems until 20 minutes ago, during an ipod sync did itunes freeze up, resulting in me having to do a hard reset. During the 5 minute boot up time, i was thinking, could this be because i havnt shut down my comp in a nearly a week? do you need to shut it down or is this crash not related to shutting down? anyone?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
To Sleep or not to sleep
- Thread starter theipodgod16
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Before installing Panther, I had my Powerbook on for two and a half months, no problems. Some people here top that easy. If you do installations and stuff, you might want to restart afterwards. Otherwise, it shouldn't be a problem. Of course it usually is..
i used to have a TiBook 667 with 768MB RAM. i used Photoshop, Safari, iTunes, Flash, Dreamweaver, InDesign and some other stuff on it every week. i was sick of having to boot up every day, so i just started putting it to sleep over night. everything usually went fine, but i found that performance, especially in Photoshop was better if i restarted on the weekends.
the problem could be because you sleep it every night... in Jaguar there was a process that just ran in the background around 12:00-2:00 in the morning that just cleaned up the system.
i remember reading that with Jag you should leave your Mac on for the whole night like once a week/month or something, or use a app like MacJanitor. i'm not sure if this is the same with Panther.
it also could have to do with the state that your Mac is in when you sleep it. i found that if i left Photoshop open, then just put it into sleep, it would almost always crash when it woke, and the same goes for most other complex programs, especially if you've got big files open. but this was in Jag, i haven't tried this in Panther yet...
you could also search Apple Support and see what that comes up with.
the problem could be because you sleep it every night... in Jaguar there was a process that just ran in the background around 12:00-2:00 in the morning that just cleaned up the system.
i remember reading that with Jag you should leave your Mac on for the whole night like once a week/month or something, or use a app like MacJanitor. i'm not sure if this is the same with Panther.
it also could have to do with the state that your Mac is in when you sleep it. i found that if i left Photoshop open, then just put it into sleep, it would almost always crash when it woke, and the same goes for most other complex programs, especially if you've got big files open. but this was in Jag, i haven't tried this in Panther yet...
you could also search Apple Support and see what that comes up with.
Its not so much an electrical shock that damages the system it the constant expanding and contracting the pc or laptop endures during use. Overtime the components will fail due to constant expanding and contracting.
So it is known to just leave the system running as much as possible so doesn't wear down the components as much.
So it is known to just leave the system running as much as possible so doesn't wear down the components as much.
How are the powersupplies after extended use (I'm especially interested in the powerbook ones, and how they react to only sleeping never being turned off).
The reason I ask, is with my old desktop PC I never shut it off, and after about 2 yaers of use the power supply fried. If I did turn it off it would be almost impossible to get it to turn it back on again, and usually took 3 or 4 days of trying before I could get power into the system.
A friend of mine had the same thing happen to her desktop PC, after only putting it to sleep (never turning it off).
I'm hoping Apple powersupplies fare better? The one in my powerbook doesn't seem too replaceable if it starts having problems...
The reason I ask, is with my old desktop PC I never shut it off, and after about 2 yaers of use the power supply fried. If I did turn it off it would be almost impossible to get it to turn it back on again, and usually took 3 or 4 days of trying before I could get power into the system.
A friend of mine had the same thing happen to her desktop PC, after only putting it to sleep (never turning it off).
I'm hoping Apple powersupplies fare better? The one in my powerbook doesn't seem too replaceable if it starts having problems...
well if you put a computer to sleep you're basically shutting it down but storing everything that was in RAM onto the hard drive. Even not putting it to sleep, the hard drive will spin down and the CPUs will cool as they aren't doing any processing. Personally, I think by the time components start to fail from heat expansion, you'll be quite ready for a new computer anyway.
This is such an old topic in the electronics world. It really does not matter which way you decide to go.
Computers have minimal problems with heating and cooling. In all my years as a computer tech I've never worked on a PC and attributed the problem to this topic. I tell users that it is up to their personal preference.
The only device I think thatn can be suseptible to this problem is a power supply. And those are so cheap compared to any other component in the computer.
I dont have many Macs at my business to ever run across a bad power supply. In PCs a power supply runs about $30-40 bucks. Very cheap.
Computers have minimal problems with heating and cooling. In all my years as a computer tech I've never worked on a PC and attributed the problem to this topic. I tell users that it is up to their personal preference.
The only device I think thatn can be suseptible to this problem is a power supply. And those are so cheap compared to any other component in the computer.
I dont have many Macs at my business to ever run across a bad power supply. In PCs a power supply runs about $30-40 bucks. Very cheap.