[reemas]

I dont have one yet, but I'm curious about this.
I normally leave my desktop on 24/7 except for RARE restarts and shutdowns.

I was wondering if I could do the same with a notebook? Notebooks in general? The powerbook?

I heard it's not a good idea to leave them on 24/7, but what do you guys think? Does it matter?

Thanks!

[John B. Smith]

I rarely turn mine off. when I'm done using it, I just put it to sleep. I guess the only reason I restart it is when I get a software update every few weeks.

[Tek]

I wouldn't recommend keeping the screen running w/ a screensaver or anything due to detoriation of LCD's overtime... but i keep mine on for traveling from class to class... heck even right now its in my backpack and still sleeping while i type this on my desktop...

May God Be With You.
-Matt

[reemas]

Yeah I figured definately not the screen, I dont even leave my desktop screen on long. But say I plugged a seperate monitor into it, and used it like a desktop while at home?

[Quattie]

One of the great things about Mac OS is that the sleepfunction WORKS, I've used many laptops (Dell, Compaq, ...) and the sleep function of Windows ****ed my session all the time => Reboot

Now, I have an Apple Powerbook G4 Titanium and I never turn it of, I close the screen (so it goes off) and the fans en HDD turns also off, when I put my screen up everything is back before in less than 1 second. Reeeaaaly fast!

I always love the reactions of the PC users around. "Didn't you turn it of, you came with your bike, isn't that dangerous for your HDD?"

I always give them a little smile... ;-)

[reemas]

sorry ignore this. i can't delete a post. see below.

[reemas]

so is it ok to leave it on constantly like a desktop? or does it have to sleep every now and then?

is there a negative side to this?

sorry for the extra questions...

[new newton]

It's not dangerous to leave them on.

[parsec_kadets]

It's perfectly fine to leave it ON all the time. This means running and not sleeping. I don't usually do this, but others have. Personally I put mine to sleep at night because I see no reason not to. People will say that it will get too hot, or the hard drive won't last as long. Those people are just paranoid, especially if you set the computer to spin down the drive when it can. Also, set the screen to turn off after a few minutes. It'll be fine. Just out of curiosity, why do you need it to be on all the time anyway?

[Millennium]

Originally posted by reemas:
so is it ok to leave it on constantly like a desktop? or does it have to sleep every now and then?

You should probably have it sleep every now and then, simply to reduce wear and tear on the drives. It also saves on battery life.

Do keep in mind that you can put it to sleep simply by closing the lid, and if you do this, waking up again is instantaneous. The only downside is that you lose your network connections while you're asleep, but the machine will reconnect when it wakes up again (anything you'd been downloading will probably be disrupted, however.

Here's my setup. When the machine is plugged in, I put the screen to sleep after fifteen minutes but I never put the whole system to sleep. When the machine is running on batteries, I put the screen to sleep after fifteen minutes and I put the whole machine to sleep after twenty.

[reemas]

mainly its for conveneince since the PB would be replacing my desktop. I figured, at home, i could plug it into a monitor and just have it on always, and turn the monitor on and off as i needed it. i guess putting it to sleep wouldnt hurt? what exactly is sleep?

mind you that this is while it's plugged in. if it's not then i'd probaly shut it down. does it hurt to move it around while it's fully powered on?

[amazing]

There are very good reasons why laptops aren't used as servers (eg machines that are left on all the time) namely the components aren't as rugged nor as cheap as the desktop equivalents, and the labor to replace failed components is extragant. You're risking premature failure of the hard drive and other miniaturized components. For example, the HD is no longer a user-installable item: If it fails, you'll void your warranty if you don't have a Apple Service Provider install the replacement HD.

The laptops wake up from sleep so quickly, you're better off using the sleep option all the time, even when you're moving the laptop any medium distance (moving to the couch or bedroom is OK, though some people will disagree...)

Sleep is when you tell the Mac to go into suspended animation. The screen blanks, the HD goes to sleep (the heads park, a much safer setting for moving the laptop around in a backpack), all software that's open goes to sleep. Then, press any key when you want it to wake up and presto, all your previously open software and documents are open and waiting for you.

[reemas]

so sleep is a good option. is powering off EVEN better? or just the same?

thanks for the reply amazing. i appreciate everyone's help, but i find my opinion lies more in line with amazing.

that makes sense. one thing i didnt know till this post is that there is some hard drive part? that gets damaged or can be while moving.

[krux`]

Just set your display to sleep after ilke 15mins. i Leave mine on 24-7, it never sees a shutdown, ever. Perhaps a restart of course when updates are required, but otherwise its always on, and there's no problem. You would have to have the display set to very bright for a Very long time to cause any degredation to it, but its good to have it off when your not using it, especially for long periods. i Tend not to have the display shut when its on, even though you can have it closed and running

im just worried about the heat constatnly on the display face, since it does come thru speaker holes..

[KP*]

I put mine to sleep when I can -- I don't know if I have to, but I feel it's best not to wear it out. I never shut it down voluntarily. Like one of the above posters, I used to have an old Dell laptop that would crash every time I put it into sleep or hibernate mode. The PB sleep mode works perfectly. And waking it up is so fast, on occasion I've found myself using it almost like a (really heavy) PDA.

[gbarill]

same here. i have a willow design backpack for my tibook, so it's really handy for carrying my computer with me all day to classes. we'll be in a lecture, think of something, and i'll just whip it out and look it up on the wireless internet that's installed in all the buildings on campus (very handy). or i'll spend the whole lecture on the internet or working on a project and inadvertantly not hear a word...

but on the wear and tear issue, i put my computer to sleep while in any transport, simply because it's very hard to move the computer with the lid open! (why do this?)
when my computer is on my desk at night, i'm usually listening to music or downloading off bittorrent, so my computer stays awake (screen shuts off, and i turn the screen backlight off beforehand) all night. when i'm not downloading stuff, my computer is set to go to sleep after 1.5 hours. however, itunes running disrupts this, so what i do is put a playlist that's a few hours long on, then as soon as the playlist ends, the computer goes to sleep, so it's asleep most of the time i am.
my computer still runs great, and i've had it running almost constantly for 7 months now, and except for a few bumps, it's no worse for the wear.

[naderby]

Yep, mine gets its lid shut to sleep whenever I would of normally shut a mchine down.

Here's a question that I've been meaning to ask. Does keeping the charger plugged in permently do any dmage to the battery or the charger itself?

[sanity assassin]

I generally keep the screem open unless I'm carrying it somewhere, I guess I'm that just bit more worried about the heat issue. I also keep the lid open when I have the screen off and an external monitor connected.

[typoon]

My laptop rarely if ever goes off I just put it to sleep. the only time it even goes off is after it's been in Target mode. Other than that it stays asleep when I'm not using it.

[parsec_kadets]

Originally posted by reemas:
so sleep is a good option. is powering off EVEN better? or just the same?

thanks for the reply amazing. i appreciate everyone's help, but i find my opinion lies more in line with amazing.

that makes sense. one thing i didnt know till this post is that there is some hard drive part? that gets damaged or can be while moving.

Really the only time I actually shutdown my PB is when I'm not going to use it for several days, like when I'm out of town and I don't take my PB with me (which is never). The rest of the time I put it to sleep when I'm not using it, even when I travel with it. I do this regardless of my mode of transportation, be it plane, car, whatever. When I was in college I would ride my bike to class all the time (I lived about two and half miles from campus), and my PB was always sleeping in my backpack. I even dropped my backpack once and the casing was damaged. Still, I opened up the PB and everything worked perfectly.

Shutting down just to carry it over to the couch is being overly paranoid. I'll just leave it on for that. Trust us, when you first turn on your PB just try closing the lid, wait for the little LED to turn on, then open it up again. You'll see that it wakes up so fast that there really is no reason to leave it on all night long unless you're downloading something. Heck, I bet it takes your monitor longer to turn on than the PB does (assuming you have a CRT of course).

[Link]

On mac laptops the usual usage function =

Use while using it. Close it and it goes to sleep automatically.

Sleep = OFF. The drivs are off, the monitor and keyboard and mouse and everything else is off BUT the ram stays powered. This is so the computer can restart almost instantaneously without anything at all changing between the time you put the laptop to sleep and the time you wake it up.

Off = Everything off.

That said, it's perfectly fine to put your computer to sleep. Generally on a powerbook and depending on how much ram you have, it takes about 1% off the battery every hour or two. This is totally negated when the laptop is plugged in at night as it'll charge fully as if it was off.

Leaving your laptop on but setting the screen and hard drive to go off after a set amount of time is another option, but rarely done. I don't see any need for it since waking it up for sleep is almost instantaneous, and well.. yeah. Not to mention, hard drives have a preset hour 'lifetime' which usually translates to around 3 years. When the drive isn't spinning it's lifetime is prolonged (as that 3 year thing only applies to the drive spinning those entire 3 years).

Of course, if you're constantly spinning up/down the drive (more than I'd say 5 or so times a day), you're putting just as much stress on it anyway.

[PeteWK]

I rarely turn my Ti 667 DVI off. It just doen't need to be powered down. Really, the only time I do is when there's a software upgrade that makes me do it.

PeteWK

[BlueCat]

Coming from a Windows environment, I used to use the hibernate quite often. However, I often run into problems taht require me to reboot.

Now that I have my PB, I rarely shut it down. I can probably count the number of times I've pressed the power button on one hand!

The main reason why I don't bother shutting down is that it doesn't need it and I can save from having to wait for the computer to start up.

Having said this, although I have yet to see it on my Mac, on other UNIX's (like enterprse servers) it is recommended to reboot every now and then (monthly, quarterly or half-yearly) in case of phantom or zombie processes (which don't slow you computer down but just hangs around!).

[pwolfe1]

Mine has an uptime of 15 days right now. I just let it sleep when I'm not using it. at home its connected to a monitor in clamshell mode. In the morning I unhook everything and throw it into a backpack for the bike ride to work (15 minutes). I even hit jumps on the way there. get to work...pull it out, open her up, no problems ever! that is specifically why I switched to mac. this was never possible with my linux laptop.

hell...I even close the lid leaving work while fink is building something, and plug it in to my monitor and keyboard at home, wake it up, and it picks up like nothing ever happened. yeah. powerbooks are hardcode.

[badtz]

I currently have just the screen to go to sleep [when the battery is plugged in] ....

..... does anyone know what exactly is "put the hard disk(s) to sleep whever possible" is for ????

if you're downloading something, will it put it to sleep?

[Simon]

Originally posted by BlueCat:
Having said this, although I have yet to see it on my Mac, on other UNIX's (like enterprse servers) it is recommended to reboot every now and then (monthly, quarterly or half-yearly) in case of phantom or zombie processes (which don't slow you computer down but just hangs around!).

The reason you have yet to see it is that you have it exactly the wrong way around. Unix systems were built to be left running forever. No re-booting, no logging in and out, etc.

That said, the Mac isn't quite there yet, but it's much closer than any existing Win version. There's a reason that serious server environments never use Win, but always some flavor of Unix. Availability, reliability, standards.

Windows is the place where support tells you to boot to deal with problems. On Unix systems you never should have to boot (at least apart from core system component updates, kernel updates, etc. - think modular kernel)

If you have a zombie process do a kill -9.

Apple needs to get used to the idea (use more kext load/unload instead of booting), but we are approaching the never-boot world. Some day we will run our Macs like TVs. Finally.

[tooki]

Originally posted by reemas:
so sleep is a good option. is powering off EVEN better? or just the same?

thanks for the reply amazing. i appreciate everyone's help, but i find my opinion lies more in line with amazing.

So you weren't actually asking, you just wanted someone to confirm your fears?

The fact is, noteook hard drives are not designed for 24/7 continuous use (as in a server environment). What they ARE designed to do is withstand high amounts of spinning up and down -- something that isn't as good for desktop drives. (Note that IBM/Hitachi makes special heavy-duty versions of their notebook drives for servers.) Notebook drives are designed to be shut off and turned back on constantly, as you find in sleep mode, for example.

In any case, as long as you have the computer set to spin down the drives after a while (even if you don't actually let it go to sleep), the drive will be fine. As for the other components... if anything, thermal stress is more of an issue with them: the cooling off/warming up process theoretically causes damage. So for them, in theory, it's better to never be shut off.

Note that I said "theoretically." In practice, as long as you have it set to spin down the hard drive after a while of inactivity, just use the computer however you want.

tooki

[tooki]

Originally posted by Link:
Of course, if you're constantly spinning up/down the drive (more than I'd say 5 or so times a day), you're putting just as much stress on it anyway.

Bah. Let's look at some recent drive specs. The 80GB 4200RPM IBM Travelstar 80GN in my AlBook, for example, is rated for:

-5 years or 20,000 hours of use, whichever comes first, assuming:
--less than 333 power-on hours per month (11 hours per day)
--seeking/reading/writing operations are less than 20% of power-on hours
-300,000 start/stop cycles

300000/(5*365)=300000/1825=164.4 cycles per day

164 cycles per day!

You are not gonna wear out a notebook drive by spinning it up and down 5 times a day. In fact, it's far more important that it be allowed to spin down, so that it's not spending as much time powered on.

tooki

[tooki]

Originally posted by badtz:
I currently have just the screen to go to sleep [when the battery is plugged in] ....

..... does anyone know what exactly is "put the hard disk(s) to sleep whever possible" is for ????

if you're downloading something, will it put it to sleep?

it spins down the drives when they're idle.

Downloading will keep the drive awake, since normally, when something is being downloaded, it is being written to disk.

tooki

[amazing]

Originally posted by tooki:
The fact is, noteook hard drives are not designed for 24/7 continuous use (as in a server environment). What they ARE designed to do is withstand high amounts of spinning up and down -- something that isn't as good for desktop drives. (Note that IBM/Hitachi makes special heavy-duty versions of their notebook drives for servers.) Notebook drives are designed to be shut off and turned back on constantly, as you find in sleep mode, for example.

In any case, as long as you have the computer set to spin down the drives after a while (even if you don't actually let it go to sleep), the drive will be fine.
tooki

Very true. You see a whole bunch of reports of laptop drive failures. Way before you'd expect them to fail under the manufacturer's warranty. And at the same time, how many times have you heard of the manufacturer replacing a laptop drive under warranty?

Now, as for the HD spinning down, that rarely happens under OS X. You can use Cocktail to set the HD to spin down after 1 minute, but if your system is ever idle enough for that to happen, you'll notice it spins right back up again (I've tried it). I've got a Ti-400 that I boot into OS 9 occasionally, and it's immediately apparent what the system sounds like when you use the control strip to spin the HD down. OS X just doesn't spin the HD down. Under OS 9, I really enjoyed the quiet when the HD spun down. Under OS X, the Ti-400 is never quiet, there's always the gentle hum of the HD spinning.

In other words, if you're using your laptop at a desk 90% of the time, or you want something that runs 24/7, then get a desktop or a tower. At the very least, get an eMac--it's cheap enough that it'll pay for itself if you ever have an out-of-warranty repair on a laptop. Laptop repairs are very expensive.

[tooki]

Originally posted by amazing:
Very true. You see a whole bunch of reports of laptop drive failures. Way before you'd expect them to fail under the manufacturer's warranty. And at the same time, how many times have you heard of the manufacturer replacing a laptop drive under warranty?

A whole bunch of reports?!? Frankly, I've seen far more desktop drives fail than laptop drives. Besides, people speak up when their stuff fails. They don't do that when everything's working.

Just because something's warranted for a certain amount of time doesn't mean that every single unit will survive that long -- some will fail prematurely, and many of them will last many times their design lifetime.

As for how often have I heard of drives being replaced under warranty -- are you implying that they don't? I've never seen a drive manufacturer reject a drive for which they are the warrantor (and in fact, i've seen them replace drives that they didn't have to). And I've never seen a computer manufacturer not replace a bad drive.

tooki

[badtz]

tooki ...

if your HD has spun down, will it spin back up if you have backup programs like Deja Vu running at a specific time in the middle of the night?

[tooki]

Yes.

tooki

[phobos]

Yeah you can leave your powerbook on all the time. The only problem is the battery.
I leave my powerbook on all the time. Even though apple has a battery protection (by not letting it charge at 100%) I see that the performance of the battery has wore out quite fast. I have my powerbook for 1year and 2 months or something close to that and the battery performance is awful to say the least.
Anyway it's just a thought I'm not sure if my battery problem is due to the powerbook being constantly plugged.

[qkslvr]

Originally Posted by phobos

Yeah you can leave your powerbook on all the time. The only problem is the battery.
I leave my powerbook on all the time. Even though apple has a battery protection (by not letting it charge at 100%) I see that the performance of the battery has wore out quite fast. I have my powerbook for 1year and 2 months or something close to that and the battery performance is awful to say the least.
Anyway it's just a thought I'm not sure if my battery problem is due to the powerbook being constantly plugged.

Is this the cause? Because I've had mine for just under a year, and the battery performance is awful at best, I can't even watch one movie without the Powerbook sleeping in the middle of it, very inconvenient for travel...