[HotSoup]

Hey, I have an 867Mhz G4 PMac. Every once and awhile I hear people say they never shut down their computer, they just put it to sleep. But what really concerns me is that people say OS X runs important things in the background at night. So it should be left on?

Even if I wanted to, I'd have to convince my mom. Anyone got any info on this? Should I not be shutting down my computer every night?

[Boochie]

It is sometimes claimed that leaving your machine on all the time may be better for its components, the power supply in particular. It certainly is more convenient because you never have to wait for the machine to boot up. If you're running a server that needs to be accessible 24x7, there's a reason to leave it on all the time.

I've owned many computers over the decades and never once have I left them on all the time, and I've never had any problems. Waste of power IMHO. Of course, these days you can put your machine to sleep to save power, but in that case it won't run the the maintenance scripts.

As for those maintenance tasks, here's a nice article on how to change their schedule so they are more likely to run when the machine's on:

http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/ma...ne.html?page=2

From what I can see, people view "uptime" as some computer equivalent of manhood length: more is better. I don't get it. The answer you get back when you type uptime at the terminal has no bearing on anything whatsoever.

[Link]

If you install a utility like webmin you can easily change the cron times from within that too. If anything, though I'd just run it and sleep it if that's how you use your machine.

Here, I run ftp, many other server apps, etc, and prefer to leave it on -- it's also more convinient for me since I can leave stuff laying around, but if I didn't need to run servers, or enjoy it.. I'd sleep it.

My bro does that with his imac since he doesn't need to run it 24/7 and it's no big deal, but don't be afraid to run the machine 24/7 if you choose to.

Powermacs are essentially built to run like that, or any other way as well.

[Boochie]

Indeed! So for the original poster, there's no single correct answer.

A good solution may be to adjust the schedule on the maintenance tasks and then put the machine to sleep at night.

Or you can just shut the bugger off.

Originally posted by Link:
Powermacs are essentially built to run like that, or any other way as well.

[Nyuni]

I have a QS 867 as well.. and for the 2 years I've had it, it's been on continuously (save for moving the unit, etc.) Haven't had any issues yet from it. As was mentioned above, sometimes the constant start and stop of regular shutdown and startup can be hell on components like power supplies, hard drives, etc.

[Boochie]

I've had the same machine for 2.5 years, and it's started and shut down daily. No problems either. So -- you're probably fine at either end of the spectrum.

Originally posted by Nyuni:
I have a QS 867 as well.. and for the 2 years I've had it, it's been on continuously (save for moving the unit, etc.) Haven't had any issues yet from it. As was mentioned above, sometimes the constant start and stop of regular shutdown and startup can be hell on components like power supplies, hard drives, etc.

[mac freak]

Mine's on all the time for Seti@home
Did it with an iMac 350, then a G4 DP450, and now my G5 DP1800... never had any issues. Though an occasional restart at least feels good.

[moodymonster]

Or you can just run the maintenance tasks when you want to.

sudo periodic daily

sudo periodic weekly

sudo periodic monthly

Just type these into terminal one at a time ie, type "sudo…daily", press return, confirm your password and wait, then do the next one. You don't need to do it all the time, even the daily one. I think those maintenance tasks are really for UNIX servers etc handling lots of files and won't really impact on a personal mac system, although keeping your mac maintained can't hurt.

Or you could just leave your mac on overnight once a month or something and then it will do what it needs to do anyway. As for shuting down/restarting, with OS X it only needs to reboot when the system is modified (installs etc). Personally I just put it to sleep.