Ok to leave laptop on?

This question was posited in an earlier thread, but was inconclusive - is it ok to leave your laptop on more or less all the time, or a lot, or should you shut her down every time you're done? I used to leave my beloved beige tower on all the time, but it sleeps with the fishes now, so I'm trying to be extra super careful with my new machine.

I leave my iBook on all the time...just shut the lid and it sleeps, stays cool, and wakes right up when you need it again....I also want to show my friends a laptop with 30+ days of up time...

I know for me I power down my powerbook when I and finished, but my wife puts her iBook to sleep.

I asked an Apple tech in the apple store in NC the same question. He told me that one of Apple's selling points was that you hardly ever have to restart, and you never have to shut all the way down if you don't want to. I was told that even if you put the ibook in a case for transport, although they recommend you shutting all the way down, technically you don't "have to". The ibook stays cool enough just sleeping.

eflake said:

This question was posited in an earlier thread, but was inconclusive - is it ok to leave your laptop on more or less all the time, or a lot, or should you shut her down every time you're done? I used to leave my beloved beige tower on all the time, but it sleeps with the fishes now, so I'm trying to be extra super careful with my new machine.

Click to expand...

This may help...

I got my ibook sort of used as a result of being a Mac users club officer. After 10 years of using a older mac it was all new to me. I always left my mac on.

Anyway the ibook heated up when I left it on, to the point of being too hot to operate(blank screen - had to power off and let it cool down for it to operate).

first solution
spacers under the ibook to let air circulate.

second solution
go into system preferences, select energy saver. I found custom selected so I selected details. Then I saw that my mac was set to never power down while plugged in. I changed the setting to allow it to sleep after 3/4 hour. The sleep mode works great now and there is no over heating.

I think there is a bit of a compromise to be had here - leaving an iBook on all the time (esp if the screen stays on) will probably reduce it's service life.

Semiconductor chip manufacturers actually use elevated temperatures to deliberately shorten the life of chips under test, and so extrapolate how long the things should last at room temperature. It therefore follows that leaving your iBook turned on and doing something CPU intensive (like SETI@home for example) will shorten its life. The problem is exacerbated in laptops because there isn't so much air flow around components to keep them cool.

On the other hand, constantly powering up and down is also bad - parts of your iBook do get warm/hot in use and the constant expantion and contraction of components can weaken connections on the logic board.

There is also the issue of battery life - batteries can only be charged/discharged so many times, so always sleep your iBook as soon as it is idle when running on battery.

Basically, if you are going to need the iBook up and running again within an hour or so, it is probably better to leave it on (assuming you are connected to a power supply). If it is going to be a bit longer, then sleep is a good compromise. But if you don't need it over night, powering it down probably makes most sense.

Just my opinion and 2 cents I might add

Andy