You Computer - do u turn it off or leave it on?

a computer thats off, uses just as much energy as a computer that is in sleep mode or hibernating, about 5 watts an hour. a computer thats on but idle, uses anywhere from 60 to 100 watts an hour. ill assume the national average is about 10 cents per kilowatthour, because prices range from 5 to 16 cents nationally. 5W/1000KW= .005KW .005KW* $.10 per KWh= $.0005 per hour leaving it on but idle (not in use) uses 60 to 100, so we will use 100 for the sake of accuracy. 100W/1000KW= .1KW .1KW* $.10 per KWh= $.01 per hour now lets assume you dont use your computer for 16 hours every day, meaning you do use it 8 hours a day. off/asleep/hibernating: $.0005* 16= $.008, .008* 30 (days per month)= $.24 per month. on but idle: .01* 16= $.16, $.16* 30= $4.80 per month turning it off when its not in use, saves you $4.56 a month. not very much. id prefer to pay that and have the convenience of not turning it on and waiting when i want to use it. also ive heard the initial voltage of turning it on is much higher, and could be potentially damaging to your hardware, plus if you turn it on and off a lot, its possible, though unlikely, that your savings would be null.

i always turn my pc off not just for the power usage but for the extreme heat my computer generates. and why oh why does ur pc has to be on all the for the couple of minutes it takes to start i think the 'lag' ur pc makes takes longer. and ofcours it's not good for your pc to stay on all time some parts ( i think) can burn.

i always turn my off

My PC stays on all the time, as I have a research programme running on it 24/7. However, there are times that it has to be switched off for a while, after updates, when the screen freezes or during disconnection, through no fault of my own. Brightest Blessings.

I'm not sure one way or the other what is best for the PC but I always turn mine off at night for the power saving. I wouldn't turn it off after every use though because it's so old that I think Noah used it to keep track of the animals. lol

yes, i cant understand thing you write

I place it on standby mode if I'm planning to use it again after a few minutes. Otherwise I would turn it off. I hate wasting electricity.

Hi saundyl, If my programs needs it YES I leave it on. Most long process applications like system wide virus check, defrag, video conversion has auto shutdown any way. Lately I'm in to Torrent so I hardly turned it off, I just make sure that my external peripherals monitor, speaker, printer/scanner are off.

Here at home, we turn off the computer after we use it. That's like after almost 24 hours. LOL. We don't really leave it on 24/7 cos yeah, like you said, the fans and other devices might wear out. But after I use it, I don't turn it off immediately cos my brother's next or vice versa. Haha! We turn it off when we're off to sleep. Cheers!

here at the office, i never turnoff my computer until i out at 5pm. then in the morning i turn it onn at 8 am. i never turn it off even break time. but in our house, we always turn the computer if we ddnt use it.

That's a good question and I'm no expert, but ... Personally I leave mine on almost 24/7. My last pc was on 24/7 for the last 3 years I was using it, I have a new one now, but the other one still works perfectly fine. I don't mean to say leaving it on is better as I do not know that as fact. It does however save you from booting it up all the time and I do find it to be a smoother ride in general. Nowadays fans are built well the last long and can easily be replaced should the need arise. as for hard drives and other components, they have power saving features that allow you to set when things turn off like hard drives and monitors even the ram and your fans can be adjusted in power save mode. the heat should not be that much of an issue if your computer is idle and not under load. If heating is an issue I would suggest a better cooling solution, I myself just bought an extra 120mm intake fan and replaced my stock HSF for a cooler master hyper XT something or other :P now if anything my pc which is a quad core and is on almost all the time and has been on for the past 96 hours feels more like a refrigerator.

I usually turn it off especially when I am not using it because my parents will really complain! They are afraid that if we leave our electrical or electronic devices "on", it will be the cause of fire or shortage. lolz.

when i go to bed i turn my computer off...i don't leave my computer 24/24 for 7/7 i leave it on only when my team have a project and they need my server for testing their scripts...

it better if we turn it off when we don't use it..if you leave it on..maybe it cause computer burn..saving our electricity use..

Well normally i will turn it off when i am not using my computer , sometimes i will leave it on because of transfer photos to my friends yea .

I never turn my pc off. It doesnt even get rebooted very often. it runs pretty smoothly without rebooting often.. i dunno why. but i like it that way! hehe. maybe cause we dont install and uninstall a bunch of crud ;) I think most of the time when it gets rebooted its because windows updated and it needs to be rebooted.

I leave my computer running but I do shut off my monitor when I not using my computer. It helps to save on the elctric bill just a little.

At the moment where I live there is an "energy crisis" where 2-3 times a week we are becoming "previously lit areas". What I'm trying to say is that there is not much electricity to go around and so I shut down my pc when I am not using it, especially since it is not uncommon for the power to go out altogether and when that happens I would rather have shut down first. But even though I say that, if I'm just going to leave it for a short while I often leave it on and just turn off the monitor.

i also leave it on because..i think that i shut down and restarts the computer i think that will consumes more battery :)).

I usually put my laptop into Hibernate mode, this saves what you are doing to the hard drive, and then powers the computer off. It uses no electricity, and the computer turns on quicker than if you turned it off normally.