How often do you power down?

JonM33 said:

A PC running 24/7 is mostly idle anyway. Most PCs don't use up much power. At most it might be a couple dollars per day.

What really burns up electricity is air conditioning, electric dryer, refrigerators/freezers, electric stoves/ovens, microwaves and electric hot water heaters.

It is not even close to a couple dollars a day cost. I had an electrician in a while back and we got to discussing ceiling fans. He said their cost was about a dollar a month. I would think a PC would be about that also. There is not much electricity flowing at all.

Have it in sleep mode set to initiate after 20 mins(it's rare I'm away from it that long) but I power off 2/3 times a week for a reset.

I restart whenever a patch/upgrade/update requires a restart which in my experience occurs every couple of weeks or so and/or almost always monthly when Microsoft pushes out patches.

Other than that I always use sleep on my desktop and hibernate on my older laptops. I keep my media center pc shutdown except when I actually use it. My Windows Home Server is only started when needed or every 2 weeks to backup my systems if they have not been backed up for an upgrade/new install (I always create a new "Working copy" backup, in addition to the original system "Gold copy", if I install new software and 1: after verifying that it is stable 2: that I will continue to use it).

My main 2 PC's stay on 24/7 unless a reboot is required. I turn my Laptops off when not in use.

Always On. Except if I have to actually open my computer to check/replace/place/clean my hardware. Or in case or major electrical storm, which is rather rare. I find it bothersome to open/close my PC because it takes time to open... my POST takes like 30sec alone so, yeah. Also, I want to have my PC ready in case I want to do something. I can't do sleep because my graphic card doesn't take it (I have to replace the graphic card temporarily only to get my PC running again... see how far it goes).

That's it.

DrWho said:

Home computers are made from the cheapest components available to keep the cost of a PC down where a working person could afford it.
Those cheap components were never designed for 24x7 operation.

Unless you're running Windows Server, even windows itself was never designed to be run continuously. There are certain things that windows needs to do periodically, that it can only do by shutting down.

Hard drives and cooling fans have bearings in them. Each bearing is rated at a given number of hours. The cheaper the bearing, the fewer number of hours before failure.

So to extend the life of your PC to its utmost....turn it off when you're not using it.
If your boot up or shut down is excessively long....something is wrong...FIX IT!

In sleep mode, all my fans shut down, drives shut down and the monitor is in standby. Just enough power is used to keep the memory active.

I shut it down when not being used, no need for it to stay on. The old mu=yth of components inevitably being damaged due to expansion/shrinking when being used and being turned off is pretty much bullshit nowadays.