Everyone has an opinion on this. I never turn mine off. I will reboot it once a week though. Leaving it on keeps the processor running at a constant temperature. Cooling and heating can cause connections to expand and contract--Freeze thaw type theory.

Certainly the subject of debate and I'm not sure there is a definitive answer. I'd tell you to do what makes you happy although leaving equipment on, even in a power-saving mode does use some electricity.

There are definitely two camps on this one.
The "keep the machine running and avoid thermal cycling" so as to keep everything consistent, and the "turn it off when not in use" so as to save electricity, avoid unnecessary exposure to power outages and "bounce" on powerup, as well as (if online), attempted access to your machine. If you configure the hard drive to power down after a certain period, then the additional wear on the drive bearings can be avoided. The MTBF on a drive will be factoring in run time. However, the other system fans will still be running.

I think with XP the fans and monitor go into snooze mode leaving other stuff running and using minimal power. Mine ran for years on 24/7 as I did distributed computing for cancer research.

My Windows 7 computer stores everything on the RAM when in Snooze mode so basically nothing is running. When I wake the machine it is just a few seconds and I am good to go, a very nice feature. There is a downside if you use Skype or perhaps other instant messaging though, your online status pops up alerting others you are back at your computer at a time when you are about to do something yourself.

I think turning your computer off every night is a good idea. I use to leave mine on all the time but I believe saving energy is a good thing.A watt here a watt there adds up for you personally and really adds up for all of us nationally.
Hope this helps.

Well thanks for the opinions! Appreciate that.

My computer when left on while unattended for an hour or so (sleeping?) is so slow after I wake it up. "Like this ole lady", takes awhile to get going? "lol"
How I tell is when it takes the "snood" shot slower.

Never tried it for a longer period so couldn't tell what it would act like if different from.

I had this computer for 6 years now and turn it on and off 2 or 3 times during the day and off all night.
So far it held up and is still going strong.
Really love this ole gal! (Gateway 7200X)

Urlee

mine stay on 24/7 unless I will be away from home for more than a day, then I turn all off and disconnect from electricity in case of weather or power outages. Have always done it that way. My netbook and laptop do go into sleep mode.
During significant weather storms I turn off everything and disconnect from the wall power.

Zep

A question that I always had and maybe you can answer .. Video cards run hot and I would like to know if when you keep your pc on and turn off the monitor or when the pc goes to sleep and the monitor turns off .. Does the video card turn off?

Thanks

I'm not techie enough to know all the ins and outs but.....

I have an internal temperature monitor on my iMac. (widget called "iStat Pro") It shows the temps of the various components inside anytime I click on it. I've noticed that when waking up from overnight "sleep" those temps are pretty much the same as they are just after I boot up from cold/off.

I leave my machine on all the time. I've set it to put itself to "sleep" after 10 minutes of no-use or I can do it manually -- which I do when I go to bed. I do a manual re-start about once a week. Four years of no problems with it.

This question comes up often and you can see there is no clear consensus except one; shut down and disconnect in bad weather.

DA

I have tried it both ways.Leaveing it on all night will cost you $10.00 more a month.it booths up faster.So what I do in the morning when I get up I hit the on swicth and I'm good for the whole day.When I'n done with my morning chores the "thing" is warmed up.

Goldy, that is what I do, turn it on and get my morning routine done and turn it off at night. My computer boots right up, very little waiting time.

goldy-
Are you referring to leaving your computer/monitor fully on all night to get that number? If you have your power options set to standby or hibernate after X minutes of inactivity, the computer uses very little energy -- in the range of 3-6 W per hour. But if you leave it fully on when you're not around you do waste a lot.

Here's what I come up with for costs. To make the numbers easy, lets say that the average computer uses 4 W in standby mode, which would be about 100 W per day, or 3 kWh per month. At 12 cents per kWh, that's about 36 cents a month, or less than $5 per year. Now of course, if you leave on your peripherals, like your printer all the time, you're unnecessarily wasting more energy, so it's a good idea to think about what you do with those when you aren't using them.

I'm not arguing that you shouldn't turn your computer off if you want to. However, in our house the computer gets used intermittently from first thing in the morning to after midnight, so I leave mine on all the time with the appropriate energy saving options invoked. In addition, since I live in the Pacific NW where home heating is required for more than half the year, the little extra heat generated during those months by my computer on standby simply means that the furnace doesn't have to provide quite as much heat!

Here is a very interesting short article that discusses this issue:

Here is a link that might be useful: Saving electricity