The say that constantly starting up and shutting off the computer will shorten its life span too. The jolt of electricity to the system on start up, the spinning up of aspinng down of the HD, etc. Personally I think it's 6 of one, a half dozen of the other. I just leave mine on all the time.The Bandit said:I can't understand why people would leave their computer on "all the time". What is the benefit from it? I don't see any....I believe it will have a shorter life-span.
I do this routinely (putting it on standby) but more often than not, when it "wakes up", some programs become unstable and the whole damn thing crashes and I end up having to re-boot anyways. Particularly annoying is that the sound always cuts out completely after it comes out of standby mode. Anyone know why this happens? I'm running XP.IggyP said:It is advisable to use power save features though as this will be less wear on the system overall (its much more gentle to wake the system from a sleep than powering up) and saves hydro.
Try going into your bios and disabling any power saving features in there. They can conflict with XP. Also, make sure your sound card driver is up to date as well. Had the same problem myself on a high end Adiofile sound card and had to update. Also, something to try... Instead of manually putting the PC to sleep try allowing windows to manage this. Your power options controls should be in your control panel.t8rs said:I do this routinely (putting it on standby) but more often than not, when it "wakes up", some programs become unstable and the whole damn thing crashes and I end up having to re-boot anyways. Particularly annoying is that the sound always cuts out completely after it comes out of standby mode. Anyone know why this happens? I'm running XP.
More true words could not have been spoken. Linux is very stable and in many cases even free. Its not to difficult to set up a dual boot system so you can get used to Linux before making the switch. There is even some cross platform middleware programs that allow you to use windows applications on Linux. In short, you can do anything you can do on windows with Linux and more. It does require a lot of learning but you can even make the interface look almost same as a windows desktop or even a Mac desktop. By the way, the new Mac/Intel machines will also run windows not just OS X and they are very solid machines as is the OS X operating system. OS X is built on a UNIX architecture. My Linux server and Mac powerbook (laptop) have been up and running for 675 days without one single reboot... Even the powerbook. My windoze machines need to be booted constantly...arkania said:If you are real adventurous and looking for a change, try a linux desktop operating system.
Very stable IMO.