[G4] Sleep vs Shutdown

[Alex]

On Jun 6, 2005, at 09:04, Robert Hazelrigg wrote:

> according to Apple... left on. At least that used to be the story 
> pre-OSX. [...]

On Jun 6, 2005, at 14:10, Snow White wrote:

> My personal experience is opposite what you have said. [...]

This is not an issue of personal experience.

"With equipment that is Energy Star compliant and in areas where there 
are no issues with the quality or dependability of power, you may want 
to consider turning off equipment if it is going to be idle for eight 
hours or more. For idle periods of less than eight hours, use Energy 
Saver software to optimize energy usage."

<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=4701>

Note that, although there has been some change in wording, Apple has 
been making the same recommendation for over a decade: if you're not 
going to use the Mac in the next 8 hours, turn it off; otherwise, leave 
it on (naturally, this doesn't apply to servers).

This has nothing to do with restarting the OS, but with the 
significance of the stress caused by the initial power surge in the 
electronics, spinning up drives, etc. Some argue that, like consumer 
electronics, Macs are designed to be turned off and on at will. I find 
their arguments defective. I think it's best to follow Apple's 
suggestion.

Whether or not you turn your Mac off, you should have adequate surge 
protection, especially if you're in an area prone to power grid 
problems. Note that "adequate" means protecting not only the power 
line, but also the phone line and/or network line.

In terms of OS, Mac OS X is neither more nor less "designed to be 
always on" than Mac OS 9 and earlier. The difference is in each OSs 
architecture. The former is much more robust; but that doesn't mean it 
can't benefit from being restarted once in a while.

<0x0192>