The question of whether you should turn off your Mac when not in use provokes as much argument as whether or not to partition your HD, plus a few others <G> However I thought WAMUGgers may be interested in this response I gleaned from another list I am on. Just adds another perspective. Mind you, I seem to remember that Apple has released a KB article suggesting that if you are not going to use your Mac for 8 hours then you should turn it off, but I haven't got that KB number recorded. Cheers
quote: >Right, so should I just put my computer to sleep whenever I don't use it >unless I go on vacation or something? I heard it's hard on the machine to >startup, and you may as well avoid it by just letting it sleep when you >don't use it. The question of whether you should leave your Mac on all the time used to come up quite often when I was a participating member of BMUG. So our group guru called a bunch of experts, including engineers at Apple, to see if he could get a definitive answer to this question. He found that the concept of leaving your computer on all the time was a hold-over from mainframes, which really do benefit from being left on all the time. However, personal computers are not built to the same standards. They wear out more quickly if left on all the time. It is true that turning your computer on and off stresses it. So it is recommended that if you are going to be away from your computer for an hour or less, that you leave it on, and that if you will be away from it for over an hour that you turn it off. A good UPS will help relieve some of the stress on your computer and help it to last longer by conditioning the power that it receives and keeping the delicate componets from wearing down from surges and sags. The issue is confused by the fact that if you have a hard drive that is on its last legs you should not turn your computer off at all. Hard drives that are on their way out usually give up the ghost on startup. So, if your drive is old, and it is becoming increasingly flaky, it might be best to keep your computer running (and not asleep) until you can back up your hard drive. Is it a good idea to keep your computer asleep when you are away from it? It certainly is convenient to have it startup again so quickly, and putting your computer to sleep causes less wear on your hard drive. But, then again, I can't tell you how often I hear from folks who say: "my computer was running fine, but one day I woke it up from sleep and ...[insert horror story]." I heard this so many times that I started to recommend that folks not put their computer to sleep ever, unless they had a full backup of their data. (If their data is very important to them.) Your mileage may vary. Randy B. Singer Co-Author of: The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th and 6th editions) unquote -- Peter Sealy Lavington, Australia Youth, fitness and total knowledge of everything is quite unfairly lavished upon the ungrateful young.
