Shutting down and restarting laptop

[TWardy]

I have a habit of leaving my laptop on all the time, it's plugged into power. What is too long to leave a laptop running? How many times should I shut down or restart it?

Thanks

 

[richc46]

You are going to get many opinions on this, and heres mine.
You should shut down at night.
If you use it many times during the day leave it in sleep or hibernate mode.
A computer should be shut down at least once a week so minor problems can be corrected during boot.
Good luck

 

[TWardy]

Thanks mate

 

[koolkat77]

in my opinion a restart after every 3 to 4 hours is good.

 

[whs]

I always shut down at night - even my modem and router (with a remote switch from Home Depot). Amongst other advantages, it saves electricity.

 

[nkrogb]

Well, I often just let my laptop run for days on end. Maybe, as said by richc46, yes, maybe once a week. But, as so often with Windows, there is always a update around the corner, that want's you to restart

 

[richc46]

This is old school (perhaps), but too many shutdowns and boots are not the best thing for the computer.

 

[DeaconFrost]

There is no time or frequency that's good or bad. You can get into issues with the extremes at either end. There's no reason to do it every few hours, unless you need to apply an update, driver update, etc. You also don't want to shut it down and power it up too often. However, there's little to no reason to keep it running 24-7, either. I don't use my computer while I'm sleeping, so there's no reason to let it run. I never understood people's reluctance to boot up a computer and would choose to leave it running all the time.

 

[zigzag3143]

I believe a reboot a day keeps the BSOD's away.

 

[JMH]

I believe a reboot a day keeps the BSOD's away.

Reboot keeps away BSOD's?
Not overclocking just might... keep away BSOD's.

Re shutting down & restarting your laptop...
Rules are not set in granite.
However there seems to be no good reason to leave a laptop on add infinitem.

Good practise would indicate a shut down could be effected at least once a day when you sleep.
Try it!

 

[gregrocker]

You can let the Power Options do a lot of the work for you.

I like to be able to walk away and not worry about coming back to save any work I've left open, yet know that the computer will save it itself while going to sleep in 30 minutes, and then after an hour or so write it to the HD so it can Shutdown.

Yet when I return - hours or weeks later - the startup is much faster when Resuming and my work is intact and waiting where I left it.

The price you pay for having this hands-free ability to walk away whenever and for as long as you want is that you need to do a restart every day or so. However waiting until you have Updates which prompt for Restart is probably enough.

I like to have my laptop Hibernate when I close the lid, so it starts up faster and I can leave work out to continue what I was doing at the beach or in another room.

 

[manhunter2826]

sometimes depends on the spec of the machine also i find; some of the low power netbooks never do actually hibernate -- they need to be turned OFF. i've even played with the power options; maybe it was the netbooks at fault ?

but yes, hibernate feature i tend to use too; use the power settings as said; e.g shut down lid enables hibernation etc.

 

[Infinite]

My netbook has Hibernate, I had to change it through settings so I didn't have to press Power to resume it, instead just move the mouse or type a letter and instantly. I just Shut Down my PC.

 

[TWardy]

Thanks guys

 

[Cancerous]

I had a laptop for a year, only shut it down if it needed an update or I was going on a plane, so only around every 2-3 weeks did it get shut down.
Never had a reduce in performance, or other issue with it.

I would put it to sleep whenever I wasn't using it though, but there were a lot of nights I'd leave it on while it was downloading something.

 

[AddRAM]

So did it die after a year ?

 

[Cancerous]

Haha, no. I gave that to my mum because she bought me a new one.
It had no designated graphics card, 320GB HDD, and 4GB RAM.
New one has 1.5TB HDD, 8GB RAM, and 1.5GB graphics.

 

[CB]

I do treat my laptop just like some friends here.

I see it as an alternative while having seminar, class, or presentation, in short, it just if I'm away from my home/office desktop or it certainly the only machine to do the job. I personally don't feel too convenient to let it work as non "portable" computer. I love to do most things with available desktops PC though some work will be presented from laptop. In some situation that is rushing me then I flexibly will, like brief resume, a short report, or finishing presentation sheet.
Feels good leave all heavy work to desktops.

It means chance to get problem from shutting down and restart is tiny I guess.