Leaving computers switched on or not?

Question

Is it better to leave a home computer switched on all the time? At the moment I always switch mine off when I go out or go to bed. But is it better to leave it on - ignoring the fact it uses extra power.

Answer 1

it is best to turn of the computer, because everyone is leaving them on, and it really is affecting our world.  so pleease turn off the computer!

Answer 2

I agree with Phlebob. You can leave it on, but you should have the monitor go to sleep after a period of time of inactivity as well as have the system goes on standby in order to let the computer rest if you schedule computer management programs late at night. If you don't do such a thing the best idea would be to leave it off to conserve power on the computer as well as prevent any more dust from building up.  

Answer 3

What I usually do is keep mine off when not in use.

If I'm going to be off of it for about an hour and be back to it later that day, I put it in standby so I don't have to boot up again.

If I'm just got off of it and am going right back to it within 15-30 minutes, you can leave it running but you should probably turn the monitor off.

If it's, say, 7:00 and I'm done using it for the day, then you should be sure to shut it down.

(I think I just alternated between 1st and 2nd person, but you know what I mean :)

Answer 4

Why would you want to leave it on?

Answer 5

I shut my desk top off.  However I have a laptop that I leave on but after a certain amount of time the monitor shuts off and the hard drives stop.  The reason being I am using MagicJack voip for the phone.

Answer 6

I usually leave mine off when I'm finished for the day..otherwise during the day i sometimes set  it up to hibernate.

Answer 7

That's been a debate for as long as there have been PCs.  On the Turn It Off side are the energy-usage argument and the wear-and-tear on disk drives.  Both have been diminished with the advent of Power Management that low-powers or turns off hardware.

On the Leave It On side are the generally shorter amount of time the system needs to come back up and the possibility of scheduling time-consuming tasks such as anti-malware scans and hard drive backups for off-hours.

Personally, that's what I do.  I have Power Management set to turn off my disks and go to low power on monitor and CPU after half an hour or so, with automatic wake-up tasks scheduled on different days for Norton Anti-virus, One-Button Checkup and Spybot S&D .

Hope that helps.