Welcome to brain Stuff from house Stuff Works dot com where smart Happens. Hi Marshall Brain with today's question. Is it better to turn your computer off when you're not using it or to leave it on all the time. This is one of those questions where there is no single right answer. In other words, it depends on how you use your computer. But there are at least three situations that force you to leave your computer on twenty
four hours a day. First, if you have some kind of backup solution that runs late at night, you'll need to leave your machine on for the backup to occur. Second, if you're using your machine is some sort of server, you'll need to leave it on. For example, if your machine acts as a file server, a print server, a web server, or whatever on a land or on the Internet,
then you need to leave it on all the time. Third, if you're running something like sitting at home and you want to produce as many results sets as possible, you need to leave your machine on all the time. If you do not fall into any of those categories, then you have a choice about whether or not to leave your machine on. One reason you might want to turn it off is economic. A typical desktop PC consumes something
like three hundred watts. Let's assume that you use your PC for four hours every day, so the other twenty hours it is on would be wasted energy. If electricity costs ten cents per kilowatt hour in your area, then that twenty hours represents sixty cents a day, and sixty cents a day adds up to two d nineteen dollars per year, which is a lot of money. It's possible to use the energy saving features built into modern machines
and cut that figure in half. For example, you can have the monitor and hard disk power down automatically when not in use. You'll still be wasting a hundred dollars per year. The argument for leaving your computer on all the time is that turning it on and off some how stresses the computer's components. For example, when the CPU chip is running, you can get quite hot, and when
you turn the machine off, it cools back down. The expansion and contraction from the heat probably has some effect on the solder joints holding the chip in place and on the microfining details on the chip itself. But here are three ways to look at that. First, if it were a significant problem, the machines would be failing all the time. In fact, hardware is very reliable. Second, I don't know a single person who leaves the TV on twenty four hours a day. TVs now contain many of
the same components that computers do. TVs certainly have no problems being cycled on and off for years at a time. Third, most vendors will sell you a three year full replacement warranty for about a hundred and fifty dollars. If you're worried about it. Spends some of the money you save by turning off the machine and buy a service contract. Over three years, you'll come out way ahead. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Join how stafforks staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The hau Steffork's iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes.