Windows 7 - A couple of questions

If lightning hits a power strip, even the most expensive home one, it will fry it and everything on it. In a lightning storm, it's best just to unplug everything.

Always been my understanding and practice as well.
Supposedly more wear & tear on mechanical drives turning them on & off.

I agree with the others & also usually pull the power in lightning storms however. (even though I do have a power strip)

Speaking of:
I have heard that turning the PC complete off for say 8hrs a day, and then back on daily actually uses the same or more power. thast it best left on in this respect as well.

Any one know if this is true?

Let's go through the math. Even if we don't know the numbers, we can still figure it out.

When a computer turns back on from a cold shutdown, a few things will require more juice. The hard drive requires a bit more energy to spin up than spin normally, due to inertia.

That's the only hardware related extra energy usage. On a reboot, often times programs are shceduled to run, such as updates, virus scans, hard drive checks, etc. The additional resources demanded may use a bit more power.

Even if you left your computer off for 10 minutes, and turned it back on, the power saved during its off period would more than compensate for the additional resources used.

I was somewhat on the same lines of thinking in that regard.
Thanks for the explanation

The only thing I can think of here is the tubes in an LCD monitor - Fluorescent tubes can have a much higher startup current than the running current, due to the design.
As the monitor can amount to a major segment of a PC's power usage, not so much since the CRT days of course, this may make a difference.

still my friends PC got fried by lightning in off and unplugged mode. weird huh

Jonathan_King is spot on about power-strip surge protectors. If electrical storms are really an issue your electric company can install (costly) a lightening interrupter on the "pole" that will quash any surge. Also I'd like to remind folks who might have DSL or Dialup service to unplug phone lines from the machine (or wall). Ditto re cable or satellite hook ups.

Question: does your BIOS and/or HDD have built-in "health" monitoring ability or SW? While not foolproof, such SW can signal impending HDD failure.

Monk

I live in the lightning capitol of the US. In the summer we have daily thunderstorm and at the height of rainy season we even have three or four thunderstorms a day. I have a commercial APC. It is worth the extra money and the battery backup gives me time to shut down when (not if) the power goes out. That said, when the thunder starts and the radar shows it is heading our way, I shut down and unplug.

Even when the computer is shut down and a residential power strip is turned off, a direct lightning hit on the lines close to you can travel through the power strip and computer on/off switch.

Back when I used a dialup modem, I would have a modem fried every two years or so by lightning hitting the telephone lines. I tried to remember to unplug the telephone line; but alas, sometime I forgot.