Which is why I said it was safer. If you've hibernated your machine, you can unplug it from the wall or go through a power failure with no ill effects. If you machine loses power while in standby, everything that was being maintained in memory is lost. You might as well have unplugged your machine from the wall while it was running as far as the system is concerned.

Turn mine on as soon as get out of bed. If work day turn it off before go out and back on as soon as get home, If not at work stays on until go to bed then turn it off.

I also have an extra line cord with a physical switch just so that I can "really" turn off the power. However my criteria is closer to a few minutes.

You do realize that the power switch stopped being a power switch long ago. Nowadays the power switch is merely a power down request button that the system can chose to ignore.

Even when the system doesn't choose to ignore the powerdown request the processor is still kept powered up at all times if only so it can handle the power on request. God knows what else it does while on standby. I prefer not to find out.

Whenever I'm not using my PC I disconnect power from it. If HAL does indeed come to fruition it won't be because of me.

I'm not positive, but I am pretty sure the CPU is inactive when powered down, and has little to no activity even during standby. The bios is what handles the power on/off requests, otherwise you would have to flip the switch on the power supply if your OS locked up.


I'd be more worried about SkyNet than HAL.

No need to turn off? Leave it on.. No it doesnt consume power ..nothing it takes....BUT have you ever thought THERE ARE MANY DEVOID OF ELECTRICITY...and RESOURCES ON OUR EARTH ARE LIMITED...even a child knows then why not you ...turn every electronic appliances off when you dont need it.

US Department of Energy "When to turn off your computer"

WWW Link

Nice article.

I like using hibernate mode because if I'm in the middle of playing something I can jump right back in when I'm ready. However the performance of reawakening from hibernaton (versus a cold start + starting the game + loading your save file) depends heavily on how much memory was being used when your computer started hibernating. If the answer is 'lots' then you might as well go make a cup of tea while you wait, 'cause the bigger the hibernation file is the longer it'll take to shovel back into memory.

If you call her ugly,forget her birthday,make odd gassing noises or make fun of what she's wearing, that's a sure-fire turn-off. Oh,computer....sorry  

24/7 is the name of the game here a reboot is a hassle in my world

Well, I was gonna type it, but you said it perfectly... This is exactly the same for me.

I guess I forgot to add, I do turn off the monitors when I'm not sitting at the desk. I have LCD's so I don't wanna burn an image on the screen. I made that mistake with my first ever LCD.

Well it's been a number of years since I designed a PC but I am fairly certain that the processor core power stays on at all times unless you physically separate the plug from the wall. Also unless I'm totally confused the bios is basically processor boot code resident in ROM that the processor executes on powerup and therefore has no ability to do anything on it's own. There could possibly be hardware in the chipset that handles the power on request but I still believe the processor handles that directly.

As far as my attitudes about PC's they're fairly well known at least on the GC2 forum although from what I've heard this OTF is shared with 3 sites at least. Anyway I view a PC as a "personal computer" and basically want mine to sit there like a lump until I specifically ask it to do something. I hate task scheduler and so disable the service. Likewise with automatic updates and the like. I have very tight control on what I allow to execute on my machine. My normal operating services are limited to 17 which include 2 services for AV and firewall along with an open browser.

I basically am very disappointed with the state of the OS and software in general. As a hardware engineer I’ve seen processor speeds, memory and disk speeds improve by literally an order of 1000 yet in the same amount of time I’ve seen most of that hardware improvement be totally wasted by a corresponding decrease in the efficiencies of modern software. Yes we can do more now than we used to but nowhere near 1000 times more. At the absolute best our productivity is 10 times that of 20 years ago. Even that is a gross exaggeration, a more realistic estimate is double or triple. But even allowing for a 10 times net total productivity increase that means that while hardware efficiency has increased by a factor of 1000 that software efficiency has *decreased* by a factor of 100.

Certainly software today is more powerful than that of 20 years ago. There’s obviously no way you’re going to write millions of lines of code equivalent using assembly language but when I used to program (exclusively in assembly) we took pride in tight, clean, well documented code whereas today Microsoft refuses to perform any code optimization whatsoever. Garbage in garbage out.

While the front power button may be subject to 'soft' ATX power, the toggle on the PSU proper is still the real deal.



Most new machines support S3 standby, where only the motherboard and memory are powered (at least enough to maintain the memory's contents). This contrasts with the older S1 mode where the CPU and other components remain powered, making that mode pretty useless. More on ACPI states here. I generally use S3 standby myself, due to the dump/reload times with hibernation.

Back "in the day" turning it off was a safeguard for the system. If the HD wasn't parked in the right spot, you could create irreperable damage. And by leaving it on, there was, of course, the risk of a power outage which could cause very, very bad things by not shutting down properly (This, btw, was part of the reason for those annoying "it is now safe to turn off your computer" screens).

I personally leave mine on FT, with no problems. But then, I have a UPS in addition to the surge protector.

Ditto....UPS is the way to go...;)

With my old computer, it was on if I was home. Now, with my new computer, it's on only when I am home and awake. Why did they decide that the power buttons on the monitor and the computer need to be be made with laser blue lights that could illuminate a city block? Sure it's a studio apt. but if I leave it on I don't need to use any lights at night, at all! It is ridiculous. They are so bright I can't even see the time projected on my ceiling by my alarm clock (also blue, but much less intense).

What is clear is that 99% of people have a blissful ignorance as to how their pc functions...

Hum, well mines are always on
I reboot them to try out Bootskins or after updates
If not, they stay on and working.

Two reasons to this:
_I don't sleep so much and live in front of my PC
_When i sleep, i just put my screens off, Antivirus analyse , Defragmentation, Spyware analyse are running during my sweet dreams

Please explain

Nasty