Should You Shut Down Your Computer Every Night?
Hello friends, In this article, I am going to write an interesting topic on "Should you shut down your computer every night?" Really this is an interesting topic and after reading this article on "Should you shut down your computer every night?", you will easily understand and solve your confusion. And in the end, there is a video on this topic from Brightside, please watch the video for better understanding.
So let's start...
You probably heard that turning off your computer
for the night can be harmful to it. But you must’ve also heard the conflicting
point of view that you actually should turn it off when not using it for long. So what’s the right thing to do then? Well, turns out there are several answers
to that.
The belief that your desktop should work all
the time comes from the dawn of the computer era— the 1980s. Back then, computers were made of different
materials, and frequently turning them off and back on could potentially damage them.
Today, there’s no such problem, and you
can freely switch your desktop or laptop on and off without much harm. Still, when you turn on your computer, it
triggers a little power surge that creates some stress on the system. It isn’t likely to be hard on your electricity
bill, but it could still cause some inconvenience.
Others argue that when your device is shut
down, it saves more energy than you spend when it turns back on with that surge. So the situation seems dubious at best. It becomes clearer when you realize that modern
computers, be it laptops, desktops, or tablets, are specially designed not to be turned completely
off.
Engineers have taken note of how inconvenient
it is to close all the apps you have running, save and close all your work, and shut down,
only to wait until the device boots when you switch it on again.
If you have a solid-state drive, it might
be fast, but with a conventional hard disk drive, boot-up could take a lot of time, especially
if it’s old. Many of the computer parts have moving parts
of their own, and they need time to get up to speed.
When you shut down your device, it first closes
all the programs running on it for all users. That means all the documents you were working
on will have to be opened again, and those two dozen tabs in your browser will close
too. Modern browsers allow you to begin where you
left off even after a shutdown, of course, but that’ll still require some time.
When everything’s closed, the computer turns
off all that’s left and clears its running memory. It sweeps all the bits and pieces of programs,
leaving your system spick and span. This allows it to perform better next time.
If you don’t turn it off, many programs will leave traces of themselves that are going
to accumulate, slowing down your system. So it’s either shut down the computer and
wait until it boots up again or leave it on, like, forever, right? Nope.
There are several things you can do as well. They are hibernation and sleep mode. Both of them allow you to leave your computer
on and save your work while reducing energy consumption. You can access them from the Power settings
both on Windows and Mac.
Sleep mode conserves energy a bit worse than
hibernation, but it allows your computer to start up almost immediately. It puts everything that’s opened on your
device into RAM, or random-access memory, which is responsible for current activities
on the PC or laptop.
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| Should You Shut Down Your Computer Every Night? |
When a process is within RAM, it means you
can access it right away and it won’t need time to load. Then your device goes to power-saving mode
and pauses all activity. To exit this state, just press a key or click
your mouse, or pop your cheek like this [pop]no that won’t work – just kidding. Your computer will come alive again. On some systems, though, you may need to press
the power button instead.
Hibernation is a deeper sleep mode that doesn’t
use any energy at all, just like when you shut it down but takes more time to shake
off. In this state, your computer copies everything
you have opened to the hard drive instead of RAM, and only then falls into a slumber. Like I said, hard drives have moving parts
that need to gain some spin before you can use them, that’s why your computer is slower
to wake up from hibernation.
If you have an SSD, though, you shouldn’t
even notice the difference from sleep mode, since it boots up much faster. Take note that in the more recent systems
there’s no obvious choice between sleep and hibernation when you click the Power settings. You can check which one your device is using
by going to the system settings.
On Windows 10, you can only use sleep mode
by default, and to add hibernation you'll need to open the taskbar and type power options. Click on the first control panel that pops
up and select Choose what the power buttons do on the left-hand panel. Next, click Change settings that are currently
unavailable.In the Shutdown settings at the bottom of
the screen, tick the box next to Hibernate.
On Mac, you’ll have a different default
mode for desktop and portable computers: sleep mode for desktops, and hibernation for laptops. Both have been chosen for better performance,
so you don’t need to change them. You can still do that, though, but it will
require administrator rights and tampering with the system, so use this option at your
own risk.
I don’t want you to end up with a computer
that doesn’t wake up anymore, so no, I won't tell you about that. On Mac laptops, there’s also an option to
enter a standby mode. The device will automatically enter this state
after three hours of sleeping if there nothing connected to it, including the charger.
It’s convenient because it will conserve
energy for up to 30 days if everything’s perfect. It still uses some charge, though, so don’t
hold it for too long. With that many options to choose from, shutting
down your computer at all may seem redundant, but it’s not.
Remember I said that, upon shutdown, the machine
clears the memory? If you don’t do that from time to time,
you’ll get stuck with a slow and sleepy device at some point. Programs it runs all the time will leave a lot of trash under the hood. They will take up important space and prohibit
other stuff you run from accessing it.
That game you launched a couple of days ago
will leave little bits of data to help you start it faster next time, but if you run
another program, it might need the space the game has taken. It will eventually find where to save its
own data, but it’s going to take more and more time the longer you keep your computer
turned on.
Shutting down the device will solve the problem
in most cases. But keeping your data safe while your computer
is on is tricky because there can be power surges or outages. It’s mostly okay for laptops since they
simply switch from plugged-in mode to autonomous mode, but if you own a desktop computer, you’re
in for an unpleasant surprise when you come back. Make sure to buy a UPS, or Uninterruptible Power Supply, to save you from headache in case of a power outage.
UPS is a device that will provide an emergency
power load to your computer if the mains power suddenly isn’t there for some reason.Sounds like a generator, but unlike one, a
UPS turns on almost instantly, so your device won't forcefully shut down. On the downside, it only has a charge for
several minutes, so you’ll have to be quick to turn off your computer yourself. Or, if you do have an auxiliary generator,
it will have enough time to switch on to save you the trouble.
Hey, I hope you understand well and learn something new if you learned something new today, then please share it with your dear & near ones. And please let me know in the comment box, how is it.
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Should You Shut Down Your Computer Every Night?
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