Turn off my notebook? 3

[seaport]

I need to use my notebook in the weekend. Should I keep the notebook on the whole weekend (2 or 3 days), or turn it off every day, to better protect my notebook? I am not a hardware person. What I know is that rebooting the computer is a heavy-duty job for a PC computer.

I keep my PC on the whole week.

Thanks in advance.

Seaport

 

[Junior1544]

it isn't a big job for a pc or a notebook, if you have hardware that can handle the os well... but if your running windows 2k on a 200 mhz notebook, then keep it on, but if you are running a 500 or better, with out any cpu/memory intensive memory resident programs, then there is no problem...

 

[conceptumator]

Either way should really be OK, just keep a couple of things in mind:

1. With a notebook, make sure the AC adapter isn't sitting on anything that the heat it generates would harm

2. I always reboot at least daily just to clear the memory out. Usually, if this gets to be a problem, you will get a message telling you to reboot to restore your virtual memory.

 

[seaport]

Thanks for advices from both of you.

Seaport

 

[osuman]

The two schools of thought I have heard go like this.

1) Leaving it on all the time wears out the bearings in the fans and hard drive (if you don't power it down). This constant high speed revolution eventually causes them to break.

2) If you turn it off and on all the time then there is temperature changes going on inside the case. It gets hot when you have it on and then cools only to repeat the cycle over and over. This constant change causes the hardware to expand and contract which eventually breaks solder and the circuits lose thier integrity.

I would think these ideas would apply to a laptop the same as they would to a regular PC. So if you enable power saving devices then, in theory, the only thing that is damaged is the fans which are cheap.

Personally, I don't like power saving features as it seems computers never like to wake up from them, forcing me to reboot. Remember, rebooting shouldn't be that stressful of a task. I think most computers like to reboot due to the clearing of physical memory, enabling more system resources to be available.

All in all, though, in my opinion, it doesn't really matter. The hardware is going to be obsolete due to faster stuff coming out way before the bearings wear out or the boards begin to crack due to thermal expansion.

Hope all this helped. Justin

Feel free to email me at:
beckham@mailbox.orst.edu

 

[seaport]

Thanks, Justin

I don't like power saving features at all.

Seaport