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to shutdown or not to shutdown

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by nashcomp

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I understand that turning electronics off and on does more harm than leaving them on all the time.

I usually leave my PCs on 24/7 with a screensaver but I restart them every 2 or 3 days to refresh the memory.

All my current customers run 95/98or ME. I need some advice on how to explain to them that it's OK to leave their computers on all the time. They aren't completely satisfied with the damage to components theory and are worried about parts wearing out.

I know about power optionsunder the control panel, but I need some suggestions about the settings and system standby options.

Also, will scheduler tasks run if the system is in standby or the hard drive is not spinning?

I understand that the standby option on the shutdown menu is not be good for overnight because nothing gets saved to disk. Hibernate (if available) would be good, but scheduled tasks won't run.

Sorry about the long question and thanks in advance for any answers/ideas/suggestions.

nashcomp

5 replies

by stroke311

I work at a school with 300+ computers. They are started in the morning and shut off at night. 1/3 of the computers are 5+ years old. We have no problems with them. The school did a survey on electric used. There was a big savings when shut off at night. If you leave your's on at night, make sure you remove dust from them from time to time as dust will build up fasterwhen running 24/7.

by jdwaldrep

With the advancements in technology the MTBF (mean time between failures) of components has gone WAY up. In other words, if something works the first 72 hours it's going to last a while. Hard drives have MTBFs > 100,000 hours... do the math. Don't worry about spinning down the drives, you're not going to wear them out anytime soon... and therefore your Scheduled Tasks won't be an issue. The monitor sleep and screen saver is a good practice not just for power consumption but security as well... password-protect 'em.
The only other advice I can give is employ a good surge-protection device on the systems.
I hope this helps.

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