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To switch off or not to swithch off?

  • 12-11-2009 8:43am
    #1
    macgabhs
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 274 ✭✭


    I have a mac mini for about a year and a half now running OSX 10.6.1. Up till now I never really switched the computer off execpt for the odd reboot when updating. Anyway lately I've noticed that it is running very slow with spinning beacballs popping up everywhere. Last night I was at my wits end and rebooted to see if there would be an improvement. Well there was a big improvement after the reboot. So my question is should I power down when I'm finished using the machine?


Comments

  • #2
    ozt9vdujny3srf
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,152 ✭✭✭ozt9vdujny3srf


    You should be able to run your mac for a good while without it slowing down. Perhaps next time it gets slow like that, you could try and find out what is causing the problem in activity monitor. In particular see if there is anything using a lot of memory.


  • #3
    Thomas_S_Hunterson
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,151 ✭✭✭Thomas_S_Hunterson


    Well it obviously doesn't do it any harm, but even if you were to reboot every couple of days it'd be fine.


  • #4
    J-blk
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,906 ✭✭✭J-blk


    I don't switch off or reboot for usually around a month (or more) at a time... never had any problems at all with leaving both a MacBook and a Mini in sleep mode practically all the time.


  • #5
    macgabhs
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 274 ✭✭macgabhs


    ok I used activity monitor to track down the problems. First when using safari the flash plugin is using 60 - 70% of my cpu even when I'm not using a flash heavy webpage. Started using firefox again and this problem has been solved. The second problem was the Medialink media server which I use to share media to my ps3. This was using 550Mb of physical memory and over 800Mb of virtual memory even when the ps3 is not accessing the shared media.


  • #6
    faceman
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Entertainment Moderators, Social & Fun Moderators Posts: 16,663 CMod ✭✭✭✭faceman


    OP do you check and repair permissions in Utilities often? that may also help.


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  • #7
    macgabhs
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 274 ✭✭macgabhs


    Not often but I have done this recently when the problem first started. Since I found safari and medialink to be resource hogs I've stopped using them, unless I need to, and have had a much better time of it.


  • #8
    Hugh_C
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,852 ✭✭✭Hugh_C


    There are some advantages leaving it running (and not letting it sleep) because I think the cron jobs (daily/weekly/monthly maintenance routines) run in the wee hours, or certainly used to. This does a load of housekeeping chores and rotating of logs. Of course ou can get software which will force this to happen when the machine is on and you're at it!

    Another advantage of leaving it on is that each tome you power up and down a machine there are transients flowing through the power supply and internal rails which are a potential cause for component failure. The disadvantage of course is that you're paying fro more juice.

    HC


  • #9
    nialler
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 896 ✭✭✭nialler


    How much space is left on your startup disk, I find when they run low (below 20 gigs) the mac tends to slow down, I have installed about 10 mac minis in boardrooms (velcroed? to the backs of TVs) running as presentation machines and they're never turned off and they run like a charm, you could also give Onyx a run on your mac as this tends to clear caches etc and good maintenance.


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