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Hello ~
Should you shut down your PC at the end of the
day?
This is one of
those questions where there is no single right answer. In other
words, it depends on how you use your computer.
There are a
couple of situations that force you to leave your computer on 24
hours a day:
- You are on
a network, and the network administrators back
up files and/or upgrade software over the network at night. If
that is the case, and you want your machine backed up or
upgraded, then you need to leave it on all the time.
- You are
using your machine as some sort of server. If
your machine acts as a file server, print server, Web Server,
etc., on a LAN (local area network) or the Internet, then you
need to leave it on all the time.
If you do not fall into
any of these categories, then you have a choice about whether or
not to leave your machine on.
One reason why
you might want to turn it off is economic. A
typical PC consumes something like 300 watts. Let's assume that
you use your PC for four hours every day, so the other 20 hours it
is on would be wasted energy. If electricity costs 10 cents per
kilowatt-hour in your area, then that 20 hours represents 60 cents
a day. Sixty cents a day adds up to $219 per year.
It's possible
to use the energy-saving features build into modern machines and
cut that figure in half. For example, you can have the monitor and
hard disk drive power down automatically when not in use. You'll
still be wasting $100 per year.
The argument
for leaving your computer on all the time is that turning it on
and off somehow stresses the computer's
components. For example, when the CPU chip is running, it
can get quite hot, and when you turn the machine off it cools back
down. The expansion and contraction from the heat probably has
some effect on the solder joints holding the chip in place and on
the micro-fine details on the chip itself. But here are two ways
to look at that:
- If it were
a significant problem, then machines would be failing all the
time. In fact, hardware is very reliable (software is a whole
different story, and there is a lot to be said for rebooting
every day).
- I don't
know a single person who leaves the TV on 24 hours a day. TVs
contain many of the same components that computers do. TVs
certainly have no problems being cycled on and off
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