leaving laptop on

Bob Z

On long can you leave a laptop on for? Or is their no limit?

Overheal

If it's left running constantly for 256 hours it will explode

no. still a good idea to reboot every once in a while though. Its the electronic equivalent of sleep (but not Sleep Mode...) and computers need shut-eye too: even if its only for a split second per couple days. Thats because of memory leaks and things of that nature; Rebooting resets all of the RAM. RAM left running longer will accumulate more memory leaks.

ricman

if you leave it on without the battery in,maybe 22hours, but i is good to leave it off for say 20mins to cool down,and to give the fan a rest.
SOME LAPTOPS ,have the fans underneath, if they are left on a flat surface , fan outlet s blocked ,they will overheat ,and damage the motherboard, it depends where the main fan is located.
it depends on the fans, fan location,is the environment well ventilated.
my laptop runs cool ,its a pentium 4 single core, dual core cpus generate more heat.
if left on with a battery, say after a few days the battery will be damaged.
Laptops ,are not like pcs, pcs are designed with large fans,cpu coolers,
so in theory they can be left on for days.

Overheal

Laptops can be left on also but ricman does make an excellent point about heat. The heat generated by a laptop when its idle isnt a whole bunch but then neither is the laptop's cooling capacity. It wont overheat, but it will continue running warm. Heat is a serious enemy to electonics: there is an exponential ratio between hardware's lifespan and the heat it is run under. Components run at a fraction of their capacity for heat could last 10, 15, 20 years. But then hardware that is run at near capacity all the time will start to break down much sooner.

AntiRip

I have an old dell inspiron 9300 on constant for 3 years I don't use it, I just use logmein for remote downloading. The lid is always closed and it restarts every so often with updates.

jpl888

Yes and the other thing about heat is it will shorten the lifespan of your battery. Good to remember if you are going to be using it without the power supply at any stage.