How often do you shut down your computer?

[Simon S]

Fixed. And I clean mine every 6 months. Compressed air is a wonderful tool.

That was the crazy part! I religiously brought the unit out to garage twice a year to blow things out with cover off.
I just never took the time to actually take the power supply out.. which I now know to do.. 'cause that shit was PACKED up in there..

[u3b3rg33k]

Did you completely disassemble your PSU to find the dirt? I can see pretty well in mine, and I just blow it back out the way it came in. Otherwise only the little stuff leaves. Same goes for the radiator on top (mine's watercooled).

[Simon S]

Like I'd blow into the PSU w/out thinking much of it.
Then it developed a condition where it'd shut down after it reached a certain temp.
It was then that I took it out and removed cover on it.. and discovered the bunny build up.
Shit's old - like '02 vintage Sony Vaio - jacked up on any/all available [out dated] pop-in hardware I can find ports for. Really shows it age when playing/streaming HD stuff..

[agent]

Be careful using compressed air on fans, since they can get spun at far higher rotational speeds than they were designed for. If you have a fan bearing that's close to going out, aiming a compressed air nozzle at it is a good way to render it useless (though that's not always a bad thing, especially if you have spares). Best practice is to immobilize the blades.

[E30SPDFRK]

My task manager doesn't show run time? How would a computer illiterate person check? I'm probably on a few months now.

[accident]

i generally reboot my laptop once a week or so.

[Dominic49]

my cr48 has only been fully shutdown 3 times since i recieved it in january, and that only when i was playing with it the first week putting it in developer mode

xoxoxxo Chrome OS

[nando]

I went about 250 days on a water/peltier cooled, dual CPU Windows 2k machine back in 2001..

but I don't really do that anymore. My work machine gets shut off every night, my HTPC gets put to sleep (it boots from sleep in like 2 seconds), and my laptop also gets put to sleep unless the battery dies.

Back in the day before sleep mode worked, it could take 5-10 minutes before your computer was useable, and that's if it was fast.. so powering down made less sense.

[agent]

Back in the day before sleep mode worked, it could take 5-10 minutes before your computer was useable, and that's if it was fast.. so powering down made less sense.

QFT

My new(er) laptop has a cool feature where closing the lid puts it into a mode that is technically hibernation since once there zero power is being used, though it becomes fully usable again about three seconds after opening the lid.

[Killacortes]

Is it bad for your laptop if you never shut it down and just charge it a
Bunch/hibernate

[u3b3rg33k]

No.

It is "bad" for your battery if you run it down to near 0% charge on a regular basis though. I'd recommend treating 20% as a minimum unless absolutely unavoidable to get maximum battery life out of it.

[nando]

Most computers come with lithium ion batteries. they don't have memory issues..

[Killacortes]

Right on. I have maybe turned it off 2 times in the past 8 months of owning it

[u3b3rg33k]

Most computers come with lithium ion batteries. they don't have memory issues..

It's not a memory thing - that got dealt with a long time ago with Ni-Cd.
Memory was the need to fully drain a battery, this is somewhat the opposite - not draining it fully on purpose. They do it in Hybrid vehicles as well. Li-ion batteries just last longer when not fully discharged.

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries

[Sailor37]

average of 200 watts, at 12 cents per kWh, that's about 58 cents a day to your computer on.