[iBook] what do you do at night?

[Angus Wallace]

In fact, it's commonly thought that leaving computers on helps extend  
their life.

When computers are running, they are warmer than ambient temperature.  
Thus, switching them on and off causes 'heat cycles' whereby the  
computer heats up (when on), cools down (when off), etc..  this  
causes very small amounts of stress in all the components, and could  
potentially lead to premature failure.

Having said this, the standard deviation of time to failure is large  
enough that you could reasonably conclude that patterns of use of  
your computer will have no effect on its life expectancy. (what an  
ugly sentence ;-)

(For myself, I never switch my ibook off - but that's for  
convenience: It wakes from sleep in less than 1 second, it takes  
about 15 seconds to boot ;-)

Take it easy,
-Gus

On 29/06/2005, at 5:24 AM, Joy Freeman wrote:

>
>
>
> Robert Newman (rlnewmanitools at mac.com)wrote:
>
>
>> Maybe I am just paranoid, but I always turn off my computers.  I have
>> many, PC's, Macs old DOS machines.  Whenever I use them I always turn
>> them off before I go off to bed.  I have not (to date) had one fail
>> prematurely.  It's a toss up!
>>
>
> No offense to Robert, but this kind of reasoning reminds me of an  
> episode
> of The Simpsons (Season 7, "Much Apu about Nothing"):
>
>     Homer: Not a bear in sight. The "Bear Patrol"
>             must be working like a charm!
>     Lisa: That's specious reasoning, Dad.
>     Homer: Thank you, dear.
>     Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this
>             rock keeps tigers away.
>     Homer: Oh, how does it work?
>     Lisa: It doesn't work.
>     Homer: Uh-huh.
>     Lisa: It's just a stupid rock. But I don't
>             see any tigers around, do you?
>     Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.
>
> Anyway, I usually leave my computers on, and while I don't know  
> what Robert
> means by "fail prematurely," I have had very few problems over the  
> years.
>
> Just my 2 cents worth,
> Joy
>
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> joy at pagesbyjoy.com
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