[Shotimes] OT - Computer- to turn off or not

[Jason Hartberger]

Basically, computers like a constant. Computers by default are not things
that like to change all the time. They like to either be on all the time, or
off all the time. In my opinion, and I've been working on these bastards
since before they had hard drives, leaving them on is the best option.
turning them on and off severely reduces their overall life span. I've had
computers with 98 running for upwards of months with careful process
management; typically I only had to reboot when the system cache got eaten
up. My record with XP is, uh, well, it's 5 months, 14 days, and counting.
The secret is in tricking windows into thinking it rebooted...

Definitely leave computers on. It's like making 10 mile trips with your car
vice a 200 mile trip at a leisurely 65... nice n easy. It just doesn't make
sense to turn computers off every day!

Jason

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Adam Parrott" <parrotta@usa.net>
To: <shotimes@autox.team.net>
Sent: Monday, March 29, 2004 11:06 PM
Subject: Re: [Shotimes] OT - Computer- to turn off or not


> FWIW, a majority of the computers in our house are on 24/7 and we haven't
> had any problems because of it.  The primary gateway computer (running the
> IPcop firewall under Linux) is an old Packard Bell desktop with a P90 and
> original 512MB hard drive.  It was our first PC back in '94 and it's still
> going strong.  The rest of the computers - my dad's mega home machine, my
> own Gateway system, and usually my mom's office PC - are on 24/7.
>
> The only hard drives that we've had to replace due to failure was a 1GB
> Maxtor drive we had in the ol' P-Bell around '98 (before it was the
gateway
> for the house).  All of the rest of the hard drive replacements have been
> due to lack of space or upgrades in technology, not failure.
>
> As for OS', the 9x series just plain sucks in my book.  Thank goodness we
> Microshaft users finally have something nice 'n stable like XP.  9x
crashes
> all the time and my brother constantly has problems out of it, which is
why
> we're upgrading the other two house machines to XP very soon.  For those
> who doubt XP's stabillity, check out this pic:
>
> http://hosting.superhighoutput.com/axianator/images/desktop_35days640.jpg
>
> The longest I've been able to run XP since installing it on my machine
last
> August is about 36 days.  I could go longer but Avast (antivirus) likes to
> update every other day and I can only go so long without rebooting.  If it
> wasn't for the updates, the machine would probably never need rebooting.
I
> /never/ could have pulled that off under 98.
>
> Bottom line is that we leave most of our machines on 24/7 (hard drives
> included) and have experienced zero problems because of it.
>
> Adam
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Ron Fleshman Insurance" <insman1@charter.net>
> To: "'Paul L Fisher'" <sho@paul-fisher.com>; <shotimes@autox.team.net>
> Sent: Monday, March 29, 2004 2:48 PM
> Subject: RE: [Shotimes] OT - Computer- to turn off or not
>
>
> <<In the
> 4 years of running 130 Dell Optiplex's, I have 2 hard drive failure, 1
> monitor.>>
>
> These were Acers.  The Dells I have are flawless and nary a failure among
> them.  I am leery of running anything 24/7 unless it has the Dell
nameplate
> on it for that reason.  Only time one of the Dells has quit was when I did
> something stupid...like downloading a virus <ahem, who me?> :).
>
>
> Ron
> _______________________________________________
> Shotimes mailing list
> Shotimes@autox.team.net
> http://www.team.net/mailman/listinfo/shotimes
> _______________________________________________
> Shotimes mailing list
> Shotimes@autox.team.net
> http://www.team.net/mailman/listinfo/shotimes