Should you ever shut down your Mac?

So now that I have a Mac, I've been told by many of my mac friends that I should just sleep my Mac. During the day, sure I'll sleep my MBP. But at night, I have been shutting it down.

What do you think?

It's really personal choice but I suggest just sleeping it as there is no advantage to shutting it down and you will be able to use it faster if you sleep it. And if I may suggest something, you should go into energy saver in system preferences and than click schedule and schedule your Mac to go to sleep a few hours or so after you go to sleep as Macs do self maintenance when they are not being used. If you leave it on whist not using it during the day than scratch that suggestion and just shut the lid and let it sleep.

i havent shut it down in over 3 weeks (besides the updates recently). i just close the lid and put it to sleep. i never had a problem since june 2007

kkelly122 said:

i havent shut it down in over 3 weeks (besides the updates recently). i just close the lid and put it to sleep. i never had a problem since june 2007

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Same mine hasn't been turned off for 2 months excluding restarts for updates.

Is it possible that you save power or prolong the life of the hardware when shutting down?

You may save about a percent or two by turning it off but that's it really, and for prolonging the life of the hardware it is quite the opposite actually, in fact apple actually suggests putting it to sleep over shutting it off.

I shut mine off every night out of habbit, if im not using it there is no reason for it to be on.

Hardware scripts run early in the morning, so you're wise to leave it on once every 2 or 3 weeks.

Otherwise, there are no advantages or disadvantages with shutting it down. Personally I like to restart every few days just to get that fresh feeling!

Alexis said:

Personally I like to restart every few days just to get that fresh feeling!

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To be compared with that "not so fresh feeling"?

lol I remember reading something about going through terminal mode to change the settings of those nightly maintenance thingies... but now I can't find it. Can anybody point me in the right direction?

As for shutting the computer down or just closing the lid, I have been alternating between the two. Old habit, really. I used to close the lid on an older (Windows-based) laptop of mine. After a while, the screen started to look like it was burned around the edges. The laptop would hibernate with the lid closed, so I could only guess that perhaps the screen was getting messed up from the residual heat emanating from the keyboard.

when I'm in the middle of a couple projects and have dozens of PDFs, Word documents, and webpages open, shutting down and losing my workflow is a huge waste of time and productivity. I only turn off once every couple weeks just to kind of refresh the computer.

Do what pleases you. After all a Mac is just a computer.

* To answer the question, I shut down my MBP once every 3-4 days and every time when I travel.

I like to shut down every couple days. If I'm working in Photoshop or something my swapfiles can get pretty big and shutting down clears them out.

Also I think Leopard is still a little buggy. It seems to be better with recent updates, but sometimes things get funky after I wake from sleep.

I put my iMac to sleep at night and then in the morning it is scheduled to wake up and then start the screen saver because my screen saver is my clock! (fliqlo)

Shutdown or Sleep?

Hi,
I've converted to mac about 3 months ago and brought a Mac Book pro.

I'm trying to work out if it's ok to put a 'sleeping' mac book in a case or if this mode is only meant for when it's sitting out on a desk or something.

I just find the startup time too long.

Thanks

johnburns said:

I just find the startup time too long.

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Really, I find that Macs start up much quicker than Windows PCs. Anyway try looking at this.

*Merged same topic threads*

Turn off every evening and a reboot check things out. Running Macaroni, a utility that carried out all those maintenance taks automatically is thus essential.

I usually shut it off if it has to go in my backpack, and that's about it.

Once in a while it's nice to kill all the processes so I can regain all my memory.

I like to shut it down just to clear up the memory. Most electronics prefer if you always keep them on as most wear and tear happens during startup but it's the difference between living 15 years and 7 so no biggie.