Taking Care of MBP

I have a MacBook Pro - about a year old - 15 inch matt screen, Intel 2.4 GHz Core2 Duo processor. I have very low technology skills/knowledge but I have no problem using my laptop. I have one question: I retired recently and I am at home a lot so I walk by my MBP many times a day and check e-mail and the stock market. Each time I use my MBP this way it's only being used for about five minutes but some days I do that fifteen times! Between "uses", should I just close the lid to put my MBP to sleep or how/what should I do - thinking in terms of what's best for the hard drive and other components? I have two more years of Apple Care but I want to know whats best to take the best care of my laptop. Thanks, Bill.

Please don't cross post.

Sorry about the double post

How do I delete the second (duplicate) post? Thanks!

You can leave it on all day and then put it to sleep at night. It's meant to be used as a desktop replacement, and it's a pro computer that can handle a lot of use. If you were using a professional computer at your job, you probably wouldn't keep putting it to sleep or powering it down all day... you'd leave it on screensaver always ready to go.

For the past few years I've taken to just leaving my laptops running 24/7 (I use it as my alarm clock in the morning) without any noticeable issues. I reboot about once/week or two depending on what I'm doing or if updates come through.

I run caffeine so i can choose to keep screensaver from kicking in - at night i do Command/Option/Eject to force it to sleep and then wake it and continue in the morning. Probably it is more important to care for your battery see here

For 3 years I have just hit sleep before i go to bed and only shut it down
when prompted by an upgrade.