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I turn all the desktops off at home at night. They are on throughout the day when they are used off and on. During the day, the practice is to put them on "sleep" when we know we are going to be away from them for awhile. But at night, they get turned off.
If I was in the situation described in the OP, I would turn the desktop off until I was going to use it. That includes letting the OS update, doing printing, or whatever.
I have a several years old desktop computer. I only really use it when I need to print something as it's connected to the printer. I also have pictures and music stored on a second hard drive on that computer. My question is is it better to shut it down when I don't use it or just leave it up and running?
A long debated issue. There are valid points on both sides of the debate.
Answer is, it really depends on what works best for you.
I say shut it off when it will not be in use for longer than a couple of hours. I have had a printer smolder and would have probably started a fire had I not been home when I use to leave everything on.
Also a friends brothers bedroom in his house caught fire from an over heated computer, don't ask me how but it did in fact happen. Which brings me to the next point, how many of you open the side of your desktop computers to vacuum it out every year or two, I have opened a few friends computers that were over heating and found a mess of dust in them.
I now turn off my computer frequently because I have a 1.5 min boot from an ssd. Before I was booting from a regular hd it took 10 minutes to boot, so I often left the computer on instead. I now focus on saving electricity and turning off my computer often.
When my computer gets too dusty I shop vac it. One time my computer had a very hard time to boot up, - the power supply was full of dust as well as dust was everywhere. After I vacuum cleaned it the first time my problems went away. So dust is a good computer killer.
I now turn off my computer frequently because I have a 1.5 min boot from an ssd. Before I was booting from a regular hd it took 10 minutes to boot, so I often left the computer on instead. I now focus on saving electricity and turning off my computer often.
When my computer gets too dusty I shop vac it. One time my computer had a very hard time to boot up, - the power supply was full of dust as well as dust was everywhere. After I vacuum cleaned it the first time my problems went away. So dust is a good computer killer.
What do you run that takes 1.5 minutes to boot? That's long for a modern computer.
Yeah, I should get 30 second boots but both my Samsung 840 Pro ssds boot in 90 seconds on my Dell E1705 laptop with XP Media Center and my custom i7 200K desktop with Windows 7 Pro. I'm just happy it's not a 7 minute boot for the laptop and 10 minutes for the desktop anymore.
I always turn mine off in the evening. Put it on sleep during the day. It is new and only takes a short time to boot; actually less than for the modem to connect. Been doing it for years but my older computers took longer to boot. May be time to look at a new computer would be my advice. There are still Windows 7 machines out there if one takes the time to look.
I have a regular hard drive. I have read recently of the solid state devices failing. Evidently they are not quite ready for prime time and cost much more. I've never had a hard drive failure since my first computer in 1985. But I do back-up regularly.
Once every few weeks, if I had to guess. Not very often.
Shut it down.
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