Sleep or Shut down?

I have had a notebook for about half a week, since its only used at home; I always keep it on ac power. My cousins tell me that turn the laptop on and off everyday will harm the components, and I should just put it in sleep mode. So which one is better and has less harm on the laptop?

 

Turning a computer on and off does put stress on the components but I don't think it is that much (please correct if I'm wrong) I shutdown each day because I leave the laptop at home for 10-11 hours at a time. If I am only going to be away for a few hours then I will use sleep mode.

 

Honestly, in my opinion, just turn it off at night. Unless you use your laptop hardcore and do lots of downloading and stuffs of that nature, or just have really bad patience in the time it takes for Windows to load, turn it off. I think that 'on & off harm-components' is baloney.

I've had my desktop for about 6+ years now and every night, I shut it down. And every day, I turn it back on to use it. I've had no hardware problems whatsoever.

But then again, you'll hear lots of people that say they leave on the laptop over night and stuff and only turn it off or restart once a week or occasionally after installing stuff. They don't have any problems with their hardware either. Personally, you're the one that gets to decide whether or not to turn it off. Whatever comforts you, you do it. It comforts me to turn off my machine whenever its not in use to give it a rest from a hard day's work. Also, my machine is fresh and ready to use when I turn it on the next day.

Not that I have patience or anything but it takes my Vaio maybe 25 seconds at the most to completely start up. So I have no problem with the boot time.

Ultimately, its up to you.

 

sleep/hibernate is the best if you plan to get on it later in the day it will put less strain on the components

 

shuting a system off once or twice a day won't kill your computer, but if you use your system like I do; constantly going from place to place, you don't have time to start up, shut down 20 times a day.




I shut my system down every month. other than that I hibernate

 

Turning it on/off every day won't make a measurable dent in the longevity of the computer. Turn it off.

 

yeah thats bogus about hardware failure due to turning it on and off. completely false. turn the machine on and off at your leisure.

 

I don't think shutting your computer down will damage the components of your laptop. For me, I use 'sleep' if I'm going to use my notebook again in the next couple of hours. But if it will take me longer to use it again, I shut my notebook down.

 

why shutdown when you can hibernate ?

 

I agree with some people in here. I would definitely shut down at night. And usually in between my classes I would hibernate my computer cuz I don't have time to close some of the programs that are open.

 

Every PC has an off and on switch? And the controversy continues.

 

The turning a system on and off on a regular basis doesnt mean your going to kill it. But it is the most significant form of wear and tear on a system.

Leaving it in sleep or hybernate, or even on all the time wont hurt it eather.

So its just a matter of how often you use the machine and how patient you are with boot times.

My PC is always on, I go back and forth from it all the time, and usually have things downloading aswell. It boots super fast but not fast enough to where I want to turn it on every time I want to go look at the forums, or listen to some music. I just use an advanced power save mode in the day, and put it to sleep at night (unless im downloading)

You can do somthing similar with your notebook since its pretty much always pluged in and stationary.

 

with my vista setup... i just hibernate... cause it just faster for me to get into windows back... so it just really a personal reference...

 

I leave my laptop on 24 hours a day. At night, I turn the saver on and dim the screen. My old laptop had a way to turn the backlight off without affecting the computer, but my new one doesn't.

 

I'd put to my notebook to sleep when i am moving from one class to another, hibernate during lunchtime and shut down before going home. I usually will not hibernate overnight unless the notebook have unfinished tasks like a virus scan.

 

I have Vista preinstalled in my SZ. I ran into a Vista help screen that encourages us to use SLEEP instead of SHUTDOWN ("Shutdown should be used if you don't plan to use your computer for a few days").

Question: Is sleep safe? What about Hibernate?

I carry my computer in a backpack or a messenger bag and walk around a lot. If the computer is in sleep mode, would this damage the hard drive while in transit?

I read once that the hard drive should be completely shut down.

Maybe I'm missing something---so far, I've been shutting down the machine.

 

Vista's sleep by default is actually sleep + hibernate(they called hybrid sleep) so it is very safe.

Even sleep mode(hybrid or not), external devices(including HDD) has been shutdown and there would not be any harm to it.

hibernate basically is a very fast complete shutdown. The only difference is that the next boot up restore an old memory state instead of a clean one, like a normal shutdown. It doesn't use even one drop of juice from the battery.

shutdown is basically unnecessary for modern day Windows since XP. The only remote argument against it is it left an image on the HDD which may contains sensitive information but if that is the concern, the page file has similar concern as well.

 

Wow---so even in XP it was ok? However, if I recall the Standby in XP isn't very good. If the hard drives are shut down however, I will recommend to my sister who still has XP on her laptop.

On my laptop (Vista) I'll start using Sleep. The only thing that's annoyed me a couple of times (I have a VAIO) is that when I've started shut down, then I close the lid and it falls asleep faster than it was able to shut down---and every once in a while it wakes up while in my backpack. That kinda freaks me out. Again, I suppose I'm more concerned about component safety that battery power.

 

By default, XP doesn't have the hibernate option. you have to enable it in the power option. It's standby is perfectly fine except it draws power and cannot withstand sudden loss of power though mostly harmless except say unsafed word documents(because incomplete shutdown on next boot).

I have been using hibernation for 8 years and the longest between reboot is over 180 days because of its windows update, not because of bugs of any sort.

It wakes up even it is sleeping are caused by one of the following :

1. some device/switch activate it but that is very unlikely as the lid is closed
2. it reaches the hibernate time(I think 1080 min by default) so it wakes up and hibernate.
3. the battery goes to a point it needs to hibernate(as sleep still draws power).

Many people don't know that even in sleep mode, 2 and 3 still function normally.

(2) can be prevented by totally disable hibernation.
(3) can be prevented to change it and let it drain to 0% or change the battery event to do nothing.

For me, I just change the close lid action to hibernate as when I need to close the lid, I expect to not using it for a while(and most likely move it around).