what is a long time for a Mac to stay up?

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What is a long time for a Mac to stay up?

I recently had an experience that forced me to restart my MBP. Before I did that I checked how long it had been running and it was about 14 days. Seems very long compared to competing operating systems :) but maybe not so long for a Mac?

What's your experience?
 

vansmith

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I don't have one for me but it could be as long as you need it to be. So, it could be from update to update.
 
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Lol and here I was thinking 9 days was to much :D It was still going strong but I felt I had to reboot before something went wrong lol..

Gotta love the sleeping function!
 
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I think I have a few anomalies, and may need to reboot soon. It's been a week or so.

I still find Windows easier to use, but hoping to find Mac better. Only after that, will I get a Mac laptop to compliment my Imac.
 
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What is a long time? well, it all depends on the system. Frankly, if I had another system to play games on instead of dual booting my mac pro, it'd have a much longer uptime.

My Mac Mini running 10.4 Tiger Server has been up 30 days:

uptime.png


And as long as our power company doesn't have it's typical min once a month power outtages, it'll be up a lot longer :)
 
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Mac OS X is built on Unix right? It should be able to run for a looonnngg time with no problems. Sometimes you can keep from having to restart by logging out and back in or using Activity Monitor to shut down processes that are causing problems. I think the longest I am aware of is about 17 days for me, and it just kind of happens. You could easily go from update to update without realizing you didn't restart.
 
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I still find Windows easier to use, but hoping to find Mac better. Only after that, will I get a Mac laptop to compliment my Imac.

How long have you had your iMac? I find that many switchers "think" Windows is easier for the first few weeks or so, then when they begin to realize how much more powerful and intuitive the Mac GUI is (and the stuff under the GUI too) they are sold.

Are you having any particular problems we could help you out with?
 
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There was a time where my Macbook went without a restart for something like 30-40 days. Right now it currently stands at 18 days.

However, I don't turn off my Macbook either, at least not for any significant period of time. So technically, it's been "on" for about three years now.
 
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When i 1st got my Macbook i was restarting every 2 days or so BC of the sill things i was doing learning the new OS... Now i have come more accustomed to it i have had a 13 day streak ... And as stated above technically the only time i have ever turned it off to stay off is 7 days in hospital when i couldnt use it for a while ...
 
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i have an iPhone and never turn it off. excepting those special meetings, church things, ceremonies etc... i never turn it off. and so far so good :) only a few hiccups that are fixed with a restart, and once when i had to restore it on itunes. lol
 
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However long it is between software updates.
 
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I had an iMac running 10.3 that was up for 342 days. If not for power outages, system updates, and the need to dual boot, I honestly believe any one of my Macs could run for years without a reboot.
 
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My macpro is somewhere around 50 days right now... my macbook however is on a few hours.. ran some updates and installed software last night.
 
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In my OP I said that after 14 days I started having problems that required a re-start. I've now been another 14 days and my MBP is running very nicely.

I think what happened the first time was this:

I started up OpenOffice which is very slow to start and gives you no indication that it really is starting. After waiting a while I figured I had not actually started it so I tried again. IIRC OpenOffice started but acted very weird and was unusable. I may have had to force quit it. That may have created a real mess.

Is that possible?

Is anyone willing to try that experiment?
 
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It depends. If I am just doing everyday activities, then 2 or 3 weeks. If I am doing something that is very CPU intensive for a long period of time, then I reboot about once a week.
 
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i never really restart to fix problems. i find that doesnt really happen. OS X is really good about non responsive programs not affecting the rest of the OS. There are some faults that occur, say like Dock.app messing up, or finder. But Since i'm a little more techy i know how to restart both dock.app and finder.app so its basically doing what you guys are doing by restarting.

It's not like by restarting your fixing the kernel or something.
 
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This is beginning to look more like what I expected from OSX:

$ uptime
5:45 up 41 days, 15:16, 2 users, load averages: 0.57 0.50 0.31
 

vansmith

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You have a way to go to catch any record ;).
 
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LOL. I was just glad to get past 14 days. I do miss the software updates, tho.
 

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