Is leaving my laptop on sleep mode all the time bad

meoklmrk91

I got a new laptop last autumn, moving from vista to 7, 7 is seemless when going in and out of sleep mode so I have gotten into the habit of just leaving it in sleep mode all the time. Often for a week at a time when I will get a pop up telling me that it has been a week and the computer needs to be rebooted, is this bad for my laptop, will it shorten it's life span?

Nothingbetter2d

it just cost u electricity.. but other than that no

_AVALANCHE_

Whenever a bigger update for windows is downloaded you'll get that message. It's the height of laziness though to not turn off the machine, you bought it last Autumn, I'd say you have a good two months left before it breaks.

I may be lying.

Phoenix Park

_AVALANCHE_ wrote: »

Whenever a bigger update for windows is downloaded you'll get that message. It's the height of laziness though to not turn off the machine, you bought it last Autumn, I'd say you have a good two months left before it breaks.

I may be lying.

why would it break? - genuine question. I also leave my laptop on sleep, and restart it once a week or so...should i shut it down fully each day? It hasnt given trouble so far, about a year old.

Ah, done by the white text!

_AVALANCHE_

Looked it up their, by putting it to sleep the system puts its current running condition into the system memory (RAM) and turns other components off (video, hard drive, etc) while only supplying power to the CPU and RAM to reserve the system state.

Hibernate is better as it saves a file of the computer state to the HDD allowing the Com to completely power off. It just loads this file then when powering back up.

I'd still turn it off though if leaving it for more than a few hours to let it tidy up the registry, it only takes 20 secs to turn back on anyway. Less with an SSD.

ressem

About once a month Microsoft releases new updates.

Some of these require the computer to be fully restarted before they will install.
Otherwise they are left in a todo list in the registry.

The important ones of these would be security and stability fixes.

Also if the computer has a problem in the distant future, it would be preferable to have a recent system restore to fall back to. One is created before each set of updates are installed.

coylemj

I'd occasionally use sleep and hibernate but you need to remember that most operating systems are not foolproof when it comes to memory management so you're better off rebooting at least every other day if only to optimise memory and make your system run more efficiently i.e. faster.

Leaving the system up for a long time without a reboot means that your memory is basically in a mess so programs will take longer to load and things will generally not run as fast as they would if you rebooted more often. The same thing happens if you leave a browser like IE or Firefox running for too long without stopping and restarting it.

You also need to periodically run the laptop off the battery, running it for days on end off the mains and leaving it permanently plugged in to preserve the memory in sleep mode is not good for the overall life of the battery. What you're doing is constantly topping up the battery from 98% to 100% and that will quickly wreck it.

If you want a quick start, you'd be far better to use Hibernate and unplug the laptop when it switches off.

biko

I don't really see an issue but you should reboot proper at least once a week to initialise everything correctly.

Penn

I usually leave mine on Hibernate which doesn't need any power. But I still do a proper shut down once a week. If I leave it too long without doing that, sometimes my wifi won't connect or things like that

chrismon

Penn wrote: »

If I leave it too long without doing that, sometimes my wifi won't connect or things like that

Iv seen this happen loads of times.

yoyo

Leaving it on sleep won't do any harm except wear out the battery faster, but I would reccomend rebooting at least once or twice a week as even when sleeping the laptop does stuff which may cause other issues when you awake it (like problems with wifi drivers etc.)

Nick

FSL

You should always shut down any electric device which does not need to be in a powered on state. Regardless of whether the power usage is small or not. One device using a small amount of power may be insignificant, but even just 1% of the billions of devices on the planet adds up to a significant waste of dwindling resources.

coylemj

FSL wrote: »

You should always shut down any electric device which does not need to be in a powered on state. Regardless of whether the power usage is small or not. One device using a small amount of power may be insignificant, but even just 1% of the billions of devices on the planet adds up to a significant waste of dwindling resources.

How do you know he's not independent of the national grid because he has a windmill to supply electricity?

We don't need self-appointed green police lecturing us about power usage.

Krusader

coylemj wrote: »

How do you know he's not independent of the national grid because he has a windmill to supply electricity?

We don't need self-appointed green police lecturing us about power usage.

He could have 1000 hamsters in the attic running in those wheels spinning turbines

_AVALANCHE_

coylemj wrote: »

How do you know he's not independent of the national grid because he has a windmill to supply electricity?

So what if he had? The power that wasn't wasted with a machine on standby would go back to the grid to power something worthwhile and he'd get paid for it instead.

coylemj wrote: »

We don't need self-appointed green police lecturing us about power usage.

Would you rather Green Police who told you when you could use power instead?

People are going to have to cop on at some stage, though I expect the decision to be made for them/us in the end.