I grew up around a computer, and I always thought that when you are done with a computer for let's say the night, you shut it down, right?

Well when I started my new job, my new boss told me to never turn off the computer. He says that shutting it down every night and restarting it every morning, the constant on and off cycle actually does more bad for the life of a computer.

The main computer in question actually has no need for staying on all night. All it is used for is working with Word and Excel files, and occasional web browsing and emailing. Other than that, after we close till the time we open the next day the computer sits for 13 hours doing nothing, well except I set up AVG to auto up-date and auto virus scan, but does the computers' hardware actually have a better chance of a longer life by not turning it off at all?

not in my opinion... because fans etc have a manufacturer estimated of life of like 200,000 hrs etc and if it son all the time thats just eating the life on those etc... now to the point of shutting on / off .. i personally Never shut off my desktop unless i need to restart for updates etc. but in my opinion i would shut them down if the only things your doing on the comp at night is a a/v scan.... also leaving them on generates more heat in the office and wastes alot of power... the average office computers uses more than 300 Watts!

That's right forgot about about the individual hardware manufacturers' estimated life times. Thanks a lot!

warriorx - Now that we've helped you, I hope you can help us by sticking around and posting in threads other than this one

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What about putting it to sleep? I just about never shut down my computer, but I always put it into a low power-consumption sleep before I leave for class/work/life/etc.

Yep, i just use hibernate.

Adjust your bios for S3 and silence.

3 second boots

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Consider this, Some office IT departments push updates out overnight. You should check to see if that is the case. Outside of that. A machine that is on, is available for hackers.
Where I work, we turn all machines off every night BUT the night that we push updates. (And we push more than Microsoft updates). This saves electricity ($$) and reduces our attack surface.

I grew up around computers too, and though I don't know the tech crap about it, I can tell you straight up that it doesn't hurt to leave it one 24/7.

Also, I go to RIT which is definitely in the upper portion of top tech colleges in the country - god knows how many computers are on campus - but I can tell you they're all left on 24/7.

It won't do any harm to it, mine stays on 24/7 - all of them have, ever since I was ~9 years of age (11 years ago).
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Yeah, I do hibernate too when I gotta leave it unplugged for transport so it boots faster..but if I remember correctly that just dumps ur ram onto ur harddisk temporarily - still good to restart every few days or so (softboot or hard) just to clear the ram out...

Also, people are talking about "hours of operation" - etc. etc. - proper maintenance IMO includes changing the fans, so if you're keeping up on your maintenance, that shouldn't be a problem. It's part of the overhaul process...people say that also includes formatting - I don't necessarily agree.

I never thought it did any bad to my computers. One of mines been running for 7 years. I shut it off every night(I don't like the extra power consumption of leaving it on). It keeps chugging along though, and I find that most offices will change computers, and get new parts, etc. before 7 years. My advice is to not be to worried about it.

It is not really a mistake or a bad thought at all on shutting it down, the key point is not to restart the computer consistently without any power down time or sleep time. The most efficient way imo is to shut it down and let it rest, if you dont shut it down the computer will build up dust get alot of dirty air and definitely will take the life off your processor if you dont clean any of it any work. Thats just my 2 cents

Upfront Scroll down to the section on Power Down. this is from E-week, an IT sector magazine. Its focus is on environmental conservation and advancing sound principles in green computing.

I have always heard that it helps from keeping it on rather than turning it on and off every five minutes. Now if your talking about shutting it down for the nite. I wouldn't see the harm in that because you probably won't turn it back on in another nine hours, but if you use it for five minutes and turn it off, and than you get back on it thirty minutes later, I would see that there could be problems, along the line.

I agree my computer stays on all day, but goes off for the night.

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Beardie Man

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shut it down
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Compters are heat sensitve

I personally leave mine on for weeks on end sometimes , but I atleast shut down once per 2 weeks ... just for windows to refresh itself