On Dec 15, 2006, at 7:58 PM, Ellen Fletcher wrote:
What are the pros and cons of shutting down overnight vs. putting to sleep?
Anything that is Energy Star rated (I believe all Macs with soft power), doesn't actually have to be turned off... ever. They are designed to drop into a low power mode that will allow just enough power to flow to keep things alive and healthy. Some Energy Star rated devices don't even come with power switches any more.
In fact, turning off your computer can shorten its life span, although with today's ultra low power sleep modes, that argument is starting to fade away, as now when they sleep, they are essentially off anyway. When you first turn on anything electric is when you do the most damage to it. I always use the light bulb analogy here... how often do you see a light bulb die while it is on, versus how often do you see it die when you first turn it on... it is that initial surge of power that damages electronics. There are also other break down issues that can happen when a machine is powered off. But with today's sleep modes, some of those issues are all starting to come about even on machines that are otherwise "turned on". (Certainly anything like drive sticktion, where a drives heads glue itself to the platters, will happen any time the drive spins down, which with the default power settings on modern OS macs can happen even while the machine is otherwise awake and in use... my verdict is out right now on allowing drives to spin down. Letting them spin down increases the risk of killing the drive due to power cycle issues, however the MTBF on drives these days is so low that some drives running 24x7x365 can reach their failure point in as little as two years... one thing is for sure... most drives these days SUCK compared to drives of the past).
I've found, without exception, machines that have had the best life spans have all been ones that run 24x7x365. Without exception, machines that have died early and given the most hardware grief, have been ones that get shut down on a regular basis.
-chris <www.mythtech.net> ___________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe send a mail message with a SUBJECT line of "unsubscribe" to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
