PCA Forums

I'd like your opinion of this:

http://www.ckcs.org/topfifty/4.html

I leave mine on all the time. Does it shorten the life of the computer? Probably. But I have a P200 sitting here that's been running almost nonstop since 1998, as well as a celeron 366 that's been running almost as long.
It's like a car. If you drive your car all the time and never replace the oil or do maintenence it'll die on me a lot quicker. But with proper maintenece, it'll last a real long time. I think the same goes for computers as well.

Just my 0.02 USD

run em all 24/7 and fold for PCA ! thats my opion :-)

The most stressful time on PC components is when you startup--so it makes since to do it as little as possible. Thus, leave it on! The only time I shutdown my computer is if I'm going away for 2+ days.

The only good thing about leaving your computer on is that you can get rid of the dust bunnies

What the hell? When you leave it <b>ON</b> you get MORE dust. It catches on the fans, filters, cards, etc. Theres no way to get around dust except to never use your PC or to have an EXTREMELY clean room. Shutting it down before you go to bed won't help.

If your computer is "always on" you provide more opportunities for hackers to find your computer.

Right <img src=http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hipnotic_ ... es/sad.gif> This doesn't even apply to everyone, you really think 56k'ers stay online 24/7?

Well I leave mine on 24/7. I leave all 3 on 24/7. No problems due to that. Shit I have a Athlon 800 thats been on for about 2 years. Only shut down maybe 3 times? Havent had any problems...

I leave all 3 of my computers on all the time... i only shut them off to work on them or when i go to lans.

All of mine are on and if you have firewalls or a NAT router someone trying to hack you is a lot less likely... some people are too paranoid... They can hack me all they want but what the ydon't know is that i have their ip address :B I've only been hacked once in the 12 years i've had pc's... and i wasn't too concerened nothing on any of my computers that i'm trying to hide or worry about people getting into...

I get asked this by clients all the time. I leave mine on 24/7 and I recommend the same, ESPECIALLY if you have an NT-based OS (NT, 2K, XP).

Only time I pull the plug on mine is if there's a real bad lightning storm brewing.

I do recommend turning off the monitor or setting it to go to sleep overnight. I also recommend setting power saver to spin down the drives after a couple of hours (unless it's a file server).

Once the monitor and drive spindle motors are turned off, there's NOTHING left to wear out except fans.

Quality built systems (like Dells, gateway, Alienware) have decent fans in them (I've NEVER had to replace fans on a Dell and a LOT of my clients have Dells).

For you do-it-yourselfers you should spend the money on good quality fans.

Even if a fan's ball bearings do wear out, you get plenty of warning (they rattle) and even quality fans aren't very expensive to replace.

I agree with Hip - booting is the most stressful time for a computer. LOTS of disk access, lots of current draw, lots of things being initialized and this is usually when Windows likes to burp. Once up and running (and assuming you don't have some other stability issue like drivers or misbehaved apps) 2K and XP are stable and never need to be rebooted.

NT based OSes are designed to run 24/7. I have clients whose NT and 2K boxes have been running continously for years.

As for hackers, if you have broadband then tuening the system off doesn't help - unles you also turn your modem off your IP won't change, which means anyone who port scanned your will be back eventually.

If you have broadband you should be hiding your network behind a router or a firewall - that's just common sense. If you have a dialup, then there's no need. Every time you connect your IP changes effectively making it nearly impossible to hack your system.

As usual, a great answer, Penguin. bUt I just looked at your website and you haven't updated you Quake info since we had Pentium II's. Ain't it time?

bUt I just looked at your website and you haven't updated you Quake info since we had Pentium II's. Ain't it time?

Hehe.... I gave up updating that site when Geforce and Radeons came out. Before then, configuring your rig for 3D gaming was a rather arcane art (miniport drivers, wrappers, all kinds of fun).

Also back then (running say a P-233 with a Voodoo1) gaining just 1 or 2 fps was a MAJOR performance improvement (when you're only getting 23 - 30 fps to begin with ANTHING feels like a big improvement).

I leave the site posted mostly for the benefit of people who still play GLQuake/GLQuakeWorld. I think my site, for instance, is the only place you can still get water VIS patch files for GLQuake.

I also occasionally hear from a few die-hards who still use Voodoo1 or Voodoo2 hardware.