I was always taught in school to keep the computer turned on as long as possible, we would turn it on once at the start of the day and shut them off at the end of the day. They said it was better for the computer itsself. My dad says that is wrong and it should be turned on when you are using it and shut off when you are done, no matter how many times we turn it on and off during a day and with 5 different people using the same computer it gets turned on and off many, many times during that day. I was wondering who is correct. Is it better for the computer itsself to keep it turned on, or to keep turning it on then off?
203050
Pretty much a catch 22 question.  The answer really relies on how much use during the day when it's left on.  Turning the computer on and off numerous times throughout the day will wear on certain parts of the computer while leaving it on constantly will wear on other parts of the computer.  If the computer is used constantly throughout the day I would leave it on and ensure that it is properly cooled.  If it may only be turned on once or twice a day I would shut it off.  Hope this helps.
63340
Although this is not the appropriate forum for questions like this, I will take a stab at it. Hopefully you will continue to learn more about your laptop as you go along so there really is no 'finish'.\n\n1) Read the instruction manual. It will tell you how to turn your laptop on. When you turn it on, watch the screen while the laptop goes through what it needs to do to start up. This process can take seconds or minutes depending on what is set up on your laptop. If you do not have software already loaded into your laptop, you need more help than I am prepared to provide. Hopefully, you have at least the operating system loaded.\n\n2) When the start-up process is finished, you should see a relatively unchanging view of information. Exactly what you see depends on what operating system you have.\n\n3) All laptops have a keyboard, which includes some sort of "pointing device'. It could be a button like item in the middle of the keys or a ball next to the keys or an embedded flat space in front of the keys or - if it is really cheap - only four keys with arrows. For any but the last, manipulation will provide motion of an item on the screen. This item is the 'mouse cursor'. The four keys with arrows control the 'keyboard cursor'. The 'mouse cursor' is used in conjunction with 'mouse buttons' for 'right' and 'left' 'clicking'. The purpose of 'clicking' is to relocate the "keyboard cursor'. Practice is always needed to use the pointing device efficiently. 'Clicking' and 'double clicking' in different places on the screen activate applications.\n\n4) There are some keys you need to be particularly careful about. The first is the 'Delete' key. Be very sure when you use this key that you really do want what ever happens to be selected to disappear. You may have great difficulty getting back something which has been deleted. Another set of keys to be careful using are 'Ctrl' and 'Alt'. These can change the result of just about every other key. Sometimes pressing one of these by mistake changes the mode of an application so that typing text is a nightmare.\n\n5) At the end of the start-up process, most operating systems will provide a collection of small pictures with titles underneath called ‘icons’. Each ‘icon’ represents a application or file folder. The currently selected icon is highlighted. One can change the icon selected with the arrow keys or (in some operating systems) ‘left mouse clicking’ or (in some operating systems) navigating the ‘mouse cursor’ over the preferred icon. Depending on how your operating system is set up, you either ‘left mouse click’ or ‘double left mouse click’ (using your pointing device buttons) to invoke an icon (pressing “enter” works on a highlighted icon too). Whenever you open an application with which you are not familiar, investigate the 'menu' possibilities near the top of the 'window' usually starting with 'file'. This will give you some idea of what the application does and how to go about using the application.\n\n6) Another approach is to press the ‘F1’ function key at the top of the keyboard (also available in the ‘menu’ as ‘help’).  This is an excellent source of pertinent information about where your current ‘keyboard cursor’ is placed. This will take you to the ‘help file’ associated with the application. You need to investigate the nature of ‘help files’ available on your laptop. ‘Windows help files’ normally have three ways to access information: a ‘tree’ structure table of contents; a ‘keyword’ index; and a ‘text search’ option.\n\n7) You can get options displayed for the current location of the ‘mouse cursor’ by ‘right mouse click’ing.\n\nIt should take you a significant amount of time to explore and digest the above. Come back and ask specific questions when
16286
Good one.  I realize that not all people have much (if any) experience with computers but my answer is, myself.  If you build your own PC, you know what is in it, you know what can go wrong and if something does go wrong you can fix it, sometimes in minutes, depending on the severity.  I have built two desktops so far and not one of them has had a problem yet.  I also ordered one from Dell, don't know why, it was a good price at the time and cheaper than one I could have built (irony...), anyway, I had a few problems with it but I fixed them all myself.  So I can't comment either on quality or value or even customer support because I do it all myself.\n\nI also have three laptops which have had hard drive failures and the like but I fixed those too, so again, can't comment on support there either.  The only thing I can't fix is a broken LCD display.\n\nBut if you want a chart on who is best read this article, http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,123409,pg,1,00.asp from PC World.  The comparison chart is here, http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,123409,pg,8,00.asp\n\nIf you want it done right (provided you know what you are doing), do it yourself.  Computers are the only thing I know when it comes to cars (turn key car comes on is all I know), plumbing or electrical, I am completely clueless.
658300
while you shutting down the system... there may b some unwritten data on the ram of ur computer.. if u just turn off the power switch u will lose all the data on the ram.. coz ram is dynamic storage element!! it stores the data only when the power is on!! when u use shutdown it flushes all the unnecessary data and backups some system files on the pc in order to stablize the pc for next time boot up.  so it is necessary to use shutdown dailouge... hope this answer helps u!! bye dude!!
364618
Turn it off first if you care for your laptop..
27694
U can leave it on as much as u want, but...\n1. be sure that u have installed some temperature monitoring program or u need to check BIOS for setings bout that.\n2. Remember that your CPU cant last forewer (heat damages him over time). Transistors broking over time and at some point your CPU will be out of order. For Intel its 15%, and AMD about 30% of overall number of transistors, i think.
620962
Same as anything..."ON" turns it on, and "OFF" turns it off...I'm guessing.
154358
There is no power difference between shutting it off and hibernation.  Technically in both cases the computer is off, hibernation just stores whatever is in your RAM onto the hard drive, and then when you turn it back on it loads it back into the RAM so it is like you never left.  Do not confuse hibernation with stand-by, the computer is OFF when you hibernate.
516477
The part of your LCD monitor that wears out the fastest is the backlight. It looses brightness as it is used. Typically manufacturers will spec the screen to last a number of hours of operation. That time typically is measured to allow the backlight to reduce it's brightness by half.\n\nThe interesting part is that the screen while in standby mode does not have the backlight turned on. So it doesn;t matter for that most critical part of your monitor.\n\nLeaves the rest of the electronics. they are much less vulnerable to aging. A few of the dangers to them are e.g. peak currents (occur typically when turning on), migration of atoms in semiconductors (occurs when staying very hot for long time), ... so the balance there is to turn it off when it's not used for a long time, and leave it goign while not sued for a short time. Defining long and short is a guess but don't go to extremes. \n\nDesign of consumer hardware is done with in intended lifetime, so you might want to turn it really off as the power supply is one of the easy parts to overload a little bit and tune that lifetime. Standby leaves the power supply somewhat turned on as it needs power to detect if there is a signal.\n\nMy advise: turn off when letting it sit idle for a week or so\nLeave it on standby for shorter periods on disuse\nLet the computer turn off the display (go into standby) using the screen-saver when not used for more than let's say 30 minutes.\n\nThe times indicated are subjective and everybody will have their own preference.
444522
Instead of quoting the specs or something, basically...\n\nStandby keeps your system powered slightly keeping things in memory, etc. and when you 'wake it up' by moving the mouse you are right back where you left it. If your battery dies during standby it's the same as the battery dying when your using it. You'll lose anything that was in memory.\n\nHibernation actually shuts down your computer but saves the current state onto the hard drive. When you hit the power button to turn it back on it 'resumes' windows from where you left off. It takes a little less time to boot then a cold boot but brings everything that was on the screen back up. Since it actually powers off you don't need to worry about if the battery died or anything.
325103
Your answer is subject to opinion.\n\nAs a computer repair technician for the last 20 years, I am of the opinion that physically, it is better to keep your computer on.  The components inside the computer expand with heat, contract as they cool.  The same occurs with your computer's motherboard.  This process can lead to premature component failure.  Starting your computer is also stressful on your computer's power supply and any electric motors such as computer fans and hard disk drives.  As you computer's hard drive starts, an electromagnetic field surges over the hard drive recording media which sometimes can alter data.  That's when most hard drives fail.  The hard drives will also fail when the heads stick to the hard drive platter after shutting your computer down and it cools, causing the drive not to spin up on start-up.\n\nThe downside of keeping your computer on is that is consumes electric. But not that much.  The average home computer consumes the energy of 3 - 100 Watt light bulbs (300 Watts).\n\nI hope that this helps.
1662
All computers have a source of power.  Some get it from the wall via an electric socket.  Some get it from batteries.\n\nThose with batteries must be more careful how much power they use so they don't drain the batteries so fast which will make the computer useful for longer periods of time.\n\nManaging the amount of power a computer uses is called power management.
216803
Mainly there are two types on maintenace you need to perform. One of the posters has it correct that you need to keep your Windows patches up to date, since they usually fix security flaws. Anti-Virus software is nice to have, but if you do not download or execute unknown programs and all you do is surf the net, you truely do not need one. Defragging is good to do but you really only need to do it once a month or when you uninstall a large program of some sort.\nThe second type of maintenance is physical. Dust collects inside your computer, so peridoically you will want to open your computer and used compressed canned air to dust off your computer. DO NOT use a towel, since this will create static eletricity and that is bad. Only use canned air. Another poster said to turn off your computer when you are not using it and that is not recommended. The thing the uses the most eletricity is the monitor and all you have to do is just have that turned off when you are not using it, but you would want to keep your computer on almost at all times. The reason for this is that when you turn on your computer everytime, a jolt of eletricity goes through the motherboard and doing this on a consistent basis will wear down your computer alot and will make it more siceptible (sp) to the motherboard crashing. Keeping on the computer itself, not including the monitor, does not use that much eletricity.
574432
Do you use it on more than one computer?  If so, did you remain signed on when you last used the other one?   This happens to me---work/home issue.   It's best to sign off every time you leave your computer anyway, just as a security measure.   Maybe if you reboot your computer it will clear out, if it's just a "glitch".
337753
Yes, I would say it is an overheating problem. Because it is a laptop I would recommend you to take it to a repair shop. \n\nThe laptop turns off to protect the cpu.\nWhen trying to turn it back on, it will turn it self immediately back off, because of the safety feature.\nIf it ever happens again this time wait 30 min berfore trying to switch it on again. I bet this time it will turn back on with no problems, because after 30min the temp. will be at an acceptable temperature.
549212
I would stop trying to use it altogether. You are more than likely only using it for stealing anyway, so now you are better off. Truly a shame it didn't fry your whole computer.\n\n\nLong Live Jambi
141385
I heard about it, but didn't know it was this week. Turning off the TV would keep you from staying informed and entertained. I really don't see the point. Did the people who thought this up mention the computer, the telephone, the cell phone, the iPod, hand-held video games or the movie theater? No, they didn't. So why single-out TV? They said that people should turn off the TV in order to lead a healthier life and read more. What, for one week? If you want to lead a healthier life and read more, you will, TV or not. So I say go ahead and watch TV!