[G4] monitor - turn off or sleep?

[Al Poulin]

On Oct 3, 2008, at 1:28 PM, OBrien wrote:
> On Fri, 3 Oct 2008 11:27:15 -0500, Margaret Krakowiak wrote:
>> I have a G450 DP, running 10.4.6, with a 17" Apple CRT studio
>> display monitor.
>> My question is in the interest of energy saving.
>>
>> I have energy saver set to sleep my computer and monitor after 15  
>> minutes.
>> I usually leave my computer on, meaning...... Computer
>> and monitor sleep and are ready to wake up in the morning, like  
>> me :-)
>> What I want to know is would it be better to turn off the monitor
>> when I'm at work,
>> or at night, while still leaving the computer on, and is it safe to
>> do this?...........
>
> I leave my Mac running all the time. It sleeps when I'm not using  
> it. AFAIK, when the Mac is asleep all that's on are whatever "pilot"  
> lights are blinking, plus whatever power is needed for the Mac to  
> recognize a "wake-up call" (I don't know if that's significant.) I  
> guess, the only power the monitor is using is for the blinking  
> "pilot" light. There's always been an ongoing conversation about  
> whether it's better to turn off a computer when not using, or just  
> let it run all the time. (There'll never be agreement.) You could  
> switch off just the monitor if you wanted -- I doubt that it would  
> matter much. Also, you could set your HDs to spin down after some  
> time of disuse.
>
> The only time it might not be safe is during a thunderstorm, if you  
> don't have surge protection for power and phone. Then, there's  
> earthquakes to consider, too.

Margaret is already doing well for energy savings by using sleep for  
both monitor and the computer.  But she can save just a little bit  
more by shutting down.

But there is another angle to this discussion that has to do with the  
health of the OS.  By turning off the computer or just putting it to  
sleep every night, the maintenance scripts (cron jobs) never run  
automatically.  There are daily, weekly, and monthly jobs which  
accomplish some self-cleaning of the OS.  If you sleep or shut down  
the computer every night, it is best to use a utility such as  
MacJanitor, OnyX, and Cocktail to run the jobs, maybe every couple  
months.

Beyond this, sometimes when folks never completely shut down their  
machines and then perform some software update, say for the OS itself  
or an application where the process requires a "Restart," surprising  
and perplexing problems arise.  Users then naturally blame Apple for a  
faulty update installer process.  The real blame belongs to the fact  
that the machine had not undergone a cold "Startup" for months.  Upon  
startup, the OS performs some checks on the health of the machine and  
also some self-cleaning.  Never doing startup allows some failure  
conditions to remain hidden.

Al Poulin