QOTD: Do You Shut Off Your PC At Night?

I always turn off and unplug my computers a night. This not only saves energy, it means there is no risk of a fire.

I don't really mind waiting for my computer to boot, it gives me time to make a brew.

I only leave my desktop and turn off laptop at night.

i just push the hibernate button on my notebook and unplug it

and on my desktop shut down and unplug ... at least we can save a bit of energy... drop by drop we could make life better ... i;m not an activist but we should learn to appreciate the earth we live on

I turn my desktop off at night because the harddrive makes too many click click nosies... I leave my laptop off, and I unplug the charger when it's not in use. It's good to save some extra $$$ on your electricity bill because it can add up really fast. The electriity company is making a huge profit off of us, and you don't even know it!

everything other than the fridge is off and unplugged in my house.

Every night unless i am downloading a game off of steam and want it finished quickly.

My PC is on 24/7. It's a desktop Pentium M (Socket 479) and consumes almost no energy. Booting my XP takes several minutes with all the soft installed.

My PC is on 24/7. It's a desktop Pentium M (Socket 479) which consumes minimal energy. Booting to XP takes several minutes. Will upgrade to an SSD drive soon.

I always turn my laptop off at night. I usually have to pack it in it's case to bring it into college in the morning anyway and I prefer to have it off for that. Even at weekends I still turn it off to save energy. It dosen't take vista too long to boot up in the morning.

my c2d e8500 (oc to 3.8ghz) its on 24/7. i only reboot it when i install new software that requires that. i set the harddrives to sleep after 20min.

Havent turned off my PC at night in years , i usually turn it of for 2-4 hrs a day only , rest of time is for downloading

All PCs in the house are off overnight - unless performing a mass transcode of my FLAC collection - then my server and main PC are on overnight.

This current build is a like a wind tunnel, so she goes off at the soonest opportunity! The new i7 build later in the year won't stay on either given the amount of kit that'll be in it.

Then again, if anything does need to be left on overnight I'll just get my ickle Atom-based web server to do it.

Still, given the way my housemate is at the moment I'm sucking up more than enough juice right now with my 50" plasma being on for days at a time! I should do something about that lol

I have 2 power desktops, 2 laptops and an Intel Atom powered kitchen cupboard server. The server is the only device which is always on but is set to shutdown to standby every night at 1am and wakes again the following day at 5pm. If I need it again I have a router with a built-in WOL (Wake on Lan) facility.

Always turn off at night and when at work or away.

I always turn off my PC when finished with it. It saves energy and the argument for keeping machines on because of wear I think are invalid because most people here would not keep their hardware long enough before upgrading to be in any danger of a premature failure due to powering off each night.

Also, certainly under older versions of Windows there are advantages to rebooting such as reducing memory fragmentation and memory leaks.

I also shut down my PC every night.

And Im not bothered by the usual wear and tear of HD, since I usually upgrade or buy new set every 4 or 5 years.

i cant see how switching on and off 'constantly' will add to the wear and tear of mechanical parts to the scale that really matters!
Surely by switching off each night will save enough energy to aquire a brand new shiny hd when the old one finally expires?
Having said that, we had a machine in the old 486 days that ran constantly for five years without a hiccup until the drive finally ground to a halt.
I thought, and still do that that was quite amazing.

Always on. Hasn't been off since i got this machine (3 months ago).

Always on, most of the time it's being used, I only go to bed for say 5-6 hours, and I'm always downloading something!

The PC is off every night when it isn't being used - there's no point it consuming/wasting energy and the subsequent extra on my electricity bill (however little). I don't buy that there will be any discernable wear and tear caused by 'constantly' switching on and off. From England.

Unless it's needed I turn it off..it may be better to leave it on to improve reliability, but with the price of energy and the fact it's not in use I just power down. Don't see any point in leaving an electrical device on unless it's being used as it should, the exception being valve and solid state audio amplifiers, butthat's only to make them warm up and sound better.

on when i'm downloading, off when i'm not. in an effort to be greener, i offset my 'on at night' by maybe not using the machine at all for a few days where possible.

Turning off and on causes more tear and wear than constant spinning for 10 hours? Really?

My main power-hungry PC goes off at night. My folding farm doesn't, it gets an hour downtime a month followed by a day allocated for maintenance, but apart from that it's folding 24/7.

At least when you turn the stuff completely off, you don't have to worry about a power surges, spikes or outages damaging your components. Then there's the threat of lightning..and fire. Amazing how many people leave PC's running in rooms with no smoke alarms, and often fed by overloaded power strips.

Over the last 10 years all my pcs (3 atm) and my laptop stays on 24/7.

I turn off my PC, but don't unplug them as I'm too lazy to unplug.

Turning off the pc is one thing, but unplugging it? do you also unplug the tv, vcr, radio etc etc?

If you keep the thing a bit clean, there is (almost) no risk of it going up in flames. Besides, there is a small battery on the motherboard, and i know of at least one instance where it caused a lot of problems in the battery running empty because it didn't recharge enough.

The PC gets turned off when I go to bed. Nothing to do with any "green" issues, it's purely fiscal!

Running a new i7 system too, in a Coolermaster HAF932 case which, while not wind tunnel loud, is loud enough to be irritating. At least, that's what my girlfriend says...

I never turn off my PCs. The exception is my Macbook as I don't trust the lack of cooling in the design. My Linux box ran for 7 years until there was a really long term power outage.