Re: Turn computer off? Or leave on?
 

"smackedass" <kemanospam@capecod.net> wrote in message
news:ljPke.9984$w21.7354@newsread3.news.atl.earthl ink.net...
> Hello again,
>
> What do you recommend? And/or, what do you do? And, why?
>
> My customers keep asking me this, and I'm ashamed to say, I don't have any
> solid answers.
>
> My stock reply: it doesn't make much of a difference, although I wouldn't
> leave it on ALL the time, or turn it off every time that I was done using
> it.
>
> Thanks, again, in advance.
>
> smackedass
>

This is a good question, and one that I have researched on the web, too.
The answers I found were as follows:

Windows 98 has a 'bug' that was never fixed, and if allowed to be on all the
time it will run out of RAM and performance will slow down. It should be
restarted on occasion, perhaps once a week.

Windows XP was designed differently, and the bug was fixed, so it will have
no ill effect to leave it on all the time.

However they may be other reasons for turning the computer off.

As far as light bulbs go, they tend to burn out on powering up due to 'cold
shock'. The sending of hot electricity through a cold filament. I don't
know what bearing this has on computers as light bulbs can be built not to
burn out, but they are not built that way for two reasons: so you need to
replace them once in a while keeping the bulb manufacturers in business, and
to keep their cost down, as building a bulb that does not burn out would be
very expensive.

--
Captain Lon

All your base are belong to us.

Re: Turn computer off? Or leave on?
 

As far as I can see it is a contest between whether you want to pay for the
electricity to run the equipment or pay to replace your equipment more
often.
From the research that I've done there is some thermal shock to the
processor and motherboard every time you shut down and restart and also to
the hard drives.
I've run Linux servers at my last job that only got turned off when the
power went off too long for the UPS it was attached to. I seldom had
hardware problems, especially memory or processor problems. Most of the
problems we did have were with power supplies, usually fans going out. BTW
the servers were standard PCs just running Linux with a bunch of RAM.
So do you want to replace equipment or pay for power to run a PC all the
time.
It really depends on how much power costs in your area as to which makes
more sense to you.

AG

"Captain Lon" <captlon@goaway.com> wrote in message
news:GjZke.2654$3u3.1954@trnddc07...
>
>
> "smackedass" <kemanospam@capecod.net> wrote in message
> news:ljPke.9984$w21.7354@newsread3.news.atl.earthl ink.net...
>> Hello again,
>>
>> What do you recommend? And/or, what do you do? And, why?
>>
>> My customers keep asking me this, and I'm ashamed to say, I don't have
>> any solid answers.
>>
>> My stock reply: it doesn't make much of a difference, although I wouldn't
>> leave it on ALL the time, or turn it off every time that I was done using
>> it.
>>
>> Thanks, again, in advance.
>>
>> smackedass
>>
>
> This is a good question, and one that I have researched on the web, too.
> The answers I found were as follows:
>
> Windows 98 has a 'bug' that was never fixed, and if allowed to be on all
> the time it will run out of RAM and performance will slow down. It should
> be restarted on occasion, perhaps once a week.
>
> Windows XP was designed differently, and the bug was fixed, so it will
> have no ill effect to leave it on all the time.
>
> However they may be other reasons for turning the computer off.
>
> As far as light bulbs go, they tend to burn out on powering up due to
> 'cold shock'. The sending of hot electricity through a cold filament. I
> don't know what bearing this has on computers as light bulbs can be built
> not to burn out, but they are not built that way for two reasons: so you
> need to replace them once in a while keeping the bulb manufacturers in
> business, and to keep their cost down, as building a bulb that does not
> burn out would be very expensive.
>
> --
> Captain Lon
>
> All your base are belong to us.
>
>

Re: Turn computer off? Or leave on?
 

"Captain Lon" <captlon@goaway.com> wrote in message
news:GjZke.2654$3u3.1954@trnddc07...

> As far as light bulbs go, they tend to burn out on powering up due to
'cold
> shock'. The sending of hot electricity through a cold filament.

Hot electricity? Never knew electricity had a temperature.

However, a very rapid change in temperature occurs in the filament when a
light bulb is first energized, leading to rapid expansion. This, when
repeated over and over, leads to bad things happening to the tungsten.

I was taught that for a vacuum tube, it would run for the most hours when
turn on and *left on* until it burned out. I would suspect that the same is
true about light bulbs unless there is a heat buildup problem with a
specific fixture.

> I don't
> know what bearing this has on computers as light bulbs can be built not to
> burn out, but they are not built that way for two reasons: so you need to
> replace them once in a while keeping the bulb manufacturers in business,
and
> to keep their cost down, as building a bulb that does not burn out would
be
> very expensive.

There must be something to this. Think of a TV picture tube. They last and
last until the phosphor gives out. A burned out filament would be a real
bummer.

If that's not enough, think about a $60,000 X-Ray tube in a CAT Scanner.
They give a lot of service, and failures are generally NOT due to filament
burnout.

I leave my computers on all the time mainly because they are on a network
and it would be a pain to go and turn one on if I needed to access it. The
monitors go to standby after 15 minutes of inactivity, so they don't make
good night lights.
--
Jim
"Be right back... Godot"

Re: Turn computer off? Or leave on?
 

JJ wrote: > Hot electricity? Never knew electricity had a temperature.


What do think causes the 'light' in a light bulb??? Electricity flows
through wires all the time without glowing, so why do light bulbs glow?? It
is because of the heat created in the bulb by the narrow filament. This
should explain 'cold shock' in a bulb. When you turn on a light, a room
temperature filament is almost instantly heated up by the friction of the
electrons trying to flow through such a narrow filament, creating much heat,
in an effort to create light, and therefore this is usually when a bulb
burns out.

--
Captain Lon

I'm smart! I'm not dumb like they say!


"JJ" <njim2k-u@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:Zyqre.975$G55.365@newssvr33.news.prodigy.com. ..
>
> "Captain Lon" <captlon@goaway.com> wrote in message
> news:GjZke.2654$3u3.1954@trnddc07...
>
>> As far as light bulbs go, they tend to burn out on powering up due to
> 'cold
>> shock'. The sending of hot electricity through a cold filament.
>
> Hot electricity? Never knew electricity had a temperature.
>
> However, a very rapid change in temperature occurs in the filament when a
> light bulb is first energized, leading to rapid expansion. This, when
> repeated over and over, leads to bad things happening to the tungsten.
>
> I was taught that for a vacuum tube, it would run for the most hours when
> turn on and *left on* until it burned out. I would suspect that the same
> is
> true about light bulbs unless there is a heat buildup problem with a
> specific fixture.
>
>> I don't
>> know what bearing this has on computers as light bulbs can be built not
>> to
>> burn out, but they are not built that way for two reasons: so you need
>> to
>> replace them once in a while keeping the bulb manufacturers in business,
> and
>> to keep their cost down, as building a bulb that does not burn out would
> be
>> very expensive.
>
> There must be something to this. Think of a TV picture tube. They last and
> last until the phosphor gives out. A burned out filament would be a real
> bummer.
>
> If that's not enough, think about a $60,000 X-Ray tube in a CAT Scanner.
> They give a lot of service, and failures are generally NOT due to filament
> burnout.
>
> I leave my computers on all the time mainly because they are on a network
> and it would be a pain to go and turn one on if I needed to access it. The
> monitors go to standby after 15 minutes of inactivity, so they don't make
> good night lights.
> --
> Jim
> "Be right back... Godot"
>
>

Re: Turn computer off? Or leave on?
 

"Captain Lon" <captlon@goaway.com> wrote in message
>news:GjZke.2654$3u3.1954@trnddc07...
>
> As far as light bulbs go, they tend to burn out on powering up due to
>'cold shock'. The sending of hot electricity through a cold filament.

If you were to post this on an electronics/electrical engineering
newsgroup, you may be surprised at the differences from your idea that
you would encounter.

Tom