do you turn your computer off at nights or put it to sleep

Hi Everyone

Have an Imac and was just wondering if most people put their computers to sleep or turn them off. Didn't find any recommendation from apple

Cheers
Al

I have been leaving my iMac on 24/7 for about a year now without any problems whatsoever.. no shutdown.. no sleep.. (besides the occasional reboot for updates, onyx cleaning, etc.) I do however sleep the display.

At work, I have an iMac that I shut down every night. At home, I have a MBP that is always on, but put to sleep when not in use.

I'm sure there are different recommendations out there, but it's all up to you.

I leave my Macbook on overnight. I put it to Sleep when traveling between classes. I don't think I've actually shut down my Macbook in quite some time.

My brother puts his iMac to sleep every night.

I shut mine down. Mainly to save electricity

I log out and set it to sleep. I wonder if the nightly cron jobs are executed when it's at sleep...

EDIT: found out that cron jobs do not run while it is at sleep.

I shut mine down but leave but put it to sleep, while ime on the xbox or something like that

Shut down of an evening but use cleaning Utilities such as Macaroni, which runs automatically , and Onyx.

Sleep normally at night, but if I'm downloading, updating, rendering, or if i plan on using the powerbook as a server during the day via my ipod touch at school, I'll leave it on overnight so I don't have to turn it on in the morning. I never turn it off unless I've had some sort of boot problem (once), or restarts for updates etc.

I'm sure apple recommended leaving the imac on when my brother got his, but i don't see the point. All you're doing is wearing everything out that bit quicker, and the imac boots up in about 15 seconds - if you can't wait for that in the morning...

I turn everything off when I'm not using it, might as well save the money. I read somewhere that tv's on standby still draw as much as 90% of the power they do when they're on, there's probably a similar story with computers. Whether it's true or not, hey, I don't really care - I'm not losing anything this way

never turned my powermac off until I sold it, unless i needed to restart after installing something.. and I have left it completely alone for 2-3 weeks while i wasn't home. I never felt the need to turn it off, it would just go on sleep.

I generally just let it sleep. If I know storms are in the area then I take precautions (I live in the lightening capital of the world). I am not sure it really uses any electricity to speak of while sleeping. Someone more wise then me probably knows that answer to that one.

Here's a handy calculator for power cost for macs from the apple site:
http://www.apple.com/environment/resources/calculator.html

to sleep or not

Well it seems that the majority of imac users just put it to sleep as opposed to turning it off.

Thanks to the person who provided us with the ability to chart the cost of leaving it on or using power saver features. Substantial savings in power mode

Cheers
Al

Sleep mode as well. I only turn my iMac off when I am out of town.

I tried putting the display to sleep only while dling stuff overnight, but I found out that everything ran slower when I used it the next day, programs were slower than usual, and the internet speed was crawling. Anyone knows why this happened?

calenerd said:

I tried putting the display to sleep only while dling stuff overnight, but I found out that everything ran slower when I used it the next day, programs were slower than usual, and the internet speed was crawling. Anyone knows why this happened?

Click to expand...

Most humans are also slower in the morning, after a nights sleep...

Seriously, I feel the same way too - just use the programs a bit and it usually goes away.

Not sure about Macs but I've been in computer over 20 years and have worked on Military Mainframes, desktops all sorts of computers. I have never heard any benefit either way. The only item that does require sleep/screensaver is the CRT monitors as they will burn in. Not sure about LCD displays. I personally leave my PCs running 24/7 no matter what and only reboot upon crashes,updates,installing programs, etc. Can hardly wait until my income tax comes in so that I can defect to a Mac. My current PC will become a file server for use on my home network.

I know I have a PowerMac, and this is an iMac thread, but it was such an interesting question i had to join in. Actually, i will mention my old iMac so its not completely cheating!

With my iMac G3-Well, i left it on. Despite having a lot of RAM, it still booted up really slowly. Didn't feel like waiting. When it's sleeping that light that pulses gets REALLY annoying, since im in sleep mode as well (ha), and i'm the type of person who has trouble sleeping and needs everything off/complete darkness. So i would just cover the light with a folder or something.

Now with my PowerMac G4 its quicker, so i turned it off at first. Now i leave it on because it's losing its speed lately
, and it's set up so that the tower is being blocked by my desk on the side, so i don't really see the light that much.
Also my PowerMac is my alarm clock as well. One out of three. I downloaded the MP3 alarm clock app, and turn my speakers up. Then i set my cell phone to the most ANNOYING ringtone (when the sains to marching in on an LG phone is horrible) and turn it all the way up and put it by the door, then my regular alarm clock by my bed. That way i HAVE to get up to turn off all the madness, and when im up, im up.