[Ti] sleep mode - Battery life

[Dennis Fazio]

--On Friday, June 06, 2003 03:07 PM +0200 Lisbeth Zachs <zachs at swedenmail.com> wrote:

> Is there seriously a teori that the computer is better treated if we shut it down properly at long breaks.
>
> I'm of the opinion that either it doesn't matter, or that it infact is better for the computer not to be turned on so often and therefor healthier to keep it running.

Being powered up all the time with moving parts (like hard disks) moving will naturally wear out a device quicker than leaving it off. Power cycling instead of leaving it always powered on is a source of constant debate over time and always creates long threads when it appears.

I think the best advice is to just do what is most convenient for you. The lifetimes of PowerBooks that are constantly left running or constantly power-cycled is several times beyond the 3 years for professionals and up to 5 years of useful life for consumers.

Constant power cycling was an issue in vacuum tube days. It became less so with early transisters, even less so with TTL integrated circuits, and is inconsequential or nonexistant with modern CMOS circuits and highly regulated low-voltage power supplies.

If you leave a disk spinning all the time, you get more bearing wear, which only means it will likely last 10 years instead of 50. The other problem is, if you keep cycling it, you will get stiction (sp?) problems (where the head gets polished so fine that the disk motor startup torque can't break the molecular/atomic binding of head to platter) and you have to whack the machine hard to get it to spin up.

For TiBooks and AlBooks with OS X, it's probably just best to leave them active and running when not being used so the Unix logging and housekeeping utilities can do their jobs in the background, and sleep it when you have to move it or when you need to save battery. You can dim the screen some to make it easier on the LCD backlight, but that probably isn't all that necessary either.

--
Dennis Fazio
dfz at mac.com