Leaving the PC On: Will Booting Up Daily Shorten a Computer's Life?

Should I leave my PC on? Or is it better to turn it off each night? That depends on who you ask. Ask a few people and you'll hear pros and cons either way. I've gone through periods where I shut mine off every night, and then again I've just let it run for months at a time. Other than shutting it down for routine maintenance or to restart it to load new software drivers, it's nice when you don't have to wait for it to bootup. Then again when I shut it down every night, that's less energy consumption and wear and tear on my computer. So what is the solution? Well let's take a look at both scenerios.

From an energy standpoint it make sense that if a computer is left on all the time, more energy will be used. I don't think there is much room to debate that point, right? Wrong! Well sort of! If you leave your computer on with a regular 3-D screen saver all night vs. doing a complete shutdown of the entire system including the monitor (and even unplugging it from the wall), obviously I don't have to tell you which way will use more power. Also it's worth mentioning, the screen saver on your computer will not save you any power. However, if you are using one of the last few releases of windows it might not make any difference at all. I say this because Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows ME include a hibernate feature. You can set your to computer to go into the hibernate mode at night. In this mode the power consumption levels drop to virtually nothing. Some brand name PC's have what they call a sleep mode, which is the same thing. When using this feature, it's almost the same result (energy wise) as turning it off. By the time you bootup the computer that was off, it's about the same amount of energy use. Even the people at Energy Star agree. In fact, they encourage people to use the hibernate or sleep mode. This way you don't have to wait a minute or 2 for bootup each morning. Ok, sounds great! How do I set up this feature?

To set up the hibernate feature in Windows: Go to Control Panel, select Power Options, then set your PC to Hibernate after a certain time. Say you select 30 minutes. Then after your machine is idle for a period of 30 minutes, it will simply go to sleep. Both the computer and the monitor.

How does leaving my computer on vs. turning it off every night affect the wear and tear?

Actually it won't matter either way. The machines years ago were affected by this. The constant on and off cycles would affect the life of the hard drives. The hard drives of old did not park their heads when turned off. So eventually they would become vulnerable to damage from all the bootup cycles. The systems today are no longer subject to these kinds of problems. In fact, you can expect to get 10's of thousands of startup cycles before any anticipated failures. For most people, you'll probably have already purchased your next PC before you experience that. As far as the heat generated by a computer, I've read where it was said that turning a PC off and on could cause damage due to expansion and contraction of chips on the motherboard. The chips expand when the system is on, and contract when off. Then on the other hand, if heat is the number one cause of wear and tear, it would make sense to turn it off every night.

So which ever way you feel comfortable should be fine. It's really just a matter of opinion. I've done it both ways and have never had any real problems yet. Do what makes you happy! Let the debate continue!