Do you turn off your PC at night?

Abe Olandres Editor-in-chief April 6, 2007 · 2 min read

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An article over at Microsoft Small Business Center asks: Do you need to turn off your PC at night?.

More often than not I leave my desktop PC on overnight. I only turn them off if I will be away for a day or more. Most of the time, it’s running Limewire, iTunes or some torrents but sometimes I just leave it there with nothing to do. I just turn off the monitor/LCD to save on electricity. I do this primarily because there are cases when I need to login or use the PC so quickly, it’s easy to just turn on the LCD/monitor than to wait 2-3 minutes for Windows to boot up.

The article discusses the use of sleep or hibernate instead of turning it off or pulling the plug. An unplugged PC still consumes 2.3 watts (because of LAN) and uses the same power during hibernate while on “sleep” mode, it eats up 3.1 watts. Regular monitors consume 75 watts when left on, 5 watts in “sleep” mode while LCD monitors eats up 22 watts when turned on and 3.3 watts in sleep mode.

These might be small figures but if you add them up in a year (365 days), you could save up to thousands of pesos (depending where you are or how much your power rate is).

So, do you also leave your PC on at night?

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Abe Olandres

Editor-in-chief

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and is considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines.

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57 Comments

purot · 18 years ago

hmmm its kind a wierd cuz my desktop is 24/7 – OFF!! hehehe because its not working anymore, wahahahaha.

vern · 19 years ago

No, it stays on along with the other 10 systems I have in the house. The only ones that go off are laptops.

JP Loh · 19 years ago

I always turn off our desktop computer when it’s not in use but sometimes I forget to. I never turn off my laptop (the adapter says 65watts).

I also have my old desktop with Linux that I use as a media server. It’s on 24/7.

vance · 19 years ago

Nope… Too many downloads, i don’t even turn my computer off if i’m out for hours; well I do sometimes especially if i’m out for 2 days or so.

Kid · 19 years ago

The desktop that everybody uses is set to sleep when there’s no activity for 30 minutes, which seems to be working well for me in terms of electricity bills.

As for the laptop, I also put it on sleep mode when not in use. I try to restart it once a week and keep it off for more than 4 hours once a month.

karla · 19 years ago

i turn it off to save electricity :D

Miguel · 19 years ago

Our two desktop PC’s here are hot, so we keep them off unless we’re doing long downloads. (one Celeron D 320 – a Prescott aka Preshott, and one AMD Duron).

My laptop is a Pentium M which is supposed to be cool, but a lot of heat seems to escape, so I keep it off.

Now if I could migrate to Core2… I could probably keep the PC’s on longer.

leo · 19 years ago

yes, i turn it off everynight – to save electricity :)

GM Tristan · 19 years ago

OFF lang cya pag walang internet connection. Hehe

Kiven · 19 years ago

i used to do that with my work PC, longest streak was i think around 6 or so months,it was on for 24/7 (i believe it was cut short becuase of an extended blackout) altrhough i do shut down the lcd monitor.

why? 4Mbps pipe, baby. nuff said.

Rick · 19 years ago

I turn it off because of the heat. but still, this is a very interesting article :)

JC John SESE Cuneta · 19 years ago

I turn-off my PC when not in use, I only leave it on when I’m downloading something. Maybe if I’m still into leeching and sharing countless of MP3s and Videos, I will leave it on almost 24/7, but I retired from that.

But I do leave my router and modem (both with wireless features) on 24/7. Turning if off 24 hrs randomly just to give it some rest.

Hamilton Chua · 19 years ago

I use to keep it on 24/7.

Until I decided to see how much I can save on electricity bills by hibernating it when I am done for the day and have it automatically boot up in the morning (http://hamisageek.blogspot.com/2007/03/one-way-to-save-on-electricity-bills.html)

Ironically, instead of going down our home electricity bill went up this month due to a large part on increased use of the electric fan and air conditioning.

Lynn · 19 years ago

Either laptop or pc, I turn then off when not in use. It’s because of the heat. I’m afraid that could damage
the motherboard.

Jenny · 19 years ago

I always turn off my computer at night but the whole day it is open.

Raul · 19 years ago

Yes because of heat. As far as I know, heat can shorten the life span of processors.. and worst it can fry your motherboard. Not good for laptop because mobo costs around the same price as a brand new mid-range laptop (I think). It’s better to be safe.

Josh The Great · 19 years ago

I never really turn it off. It’s just too much hassle to turn it on again if I have to check something or send a quick email or something.

I just usually do a cold boot every now and then. > Turn it off for 2 mins.

AJ · 19 years ago

I leave my notebook on all the time! Oh wow, thanks for this information. Will definitely help me save money on electric bills!

Onyo · 19 years ago

My pc is always on all the time, where the os take care of it in standby. From my experience from my job it is better to to be on or standby than to turn in off every time you you have to use it. I always recommend to my friends that it is better to do it that way than to turn it off, even your tvs and other consumer devices.

Pink Frog · 19 years ago

Newp. I leave them on because the tracker site I’m subscribed to will boot me off if my Bittorrent ratio goes down below .80. Seed seed seed.

juantanamera · 19 years ago

Sometimes no, sometimes yes. I turn my desktop off for 2 reasons, the heat and the noise.

jhay · 19 years ago

My pc is turned off when I go to sleep and goes back on after I wake up.

I only leave it on orvernight for a download to finish or a defrag to be completed.

Plus, i restart the pc every 4 hours, just to keep it fresh.

MM del Rosario · 19 years ago

I always turn off my computer’s monitor at night and even my TV, i don’t leave them on standby. I have read that switching appliances off at the power point will cut your electricity usage by up to 11 per cent.

Noemi · 19 years ago

When I used to have a desktop, I never shut it off unless we had a vacation that lasted more than 2 days. That PC lasted me 6 years.

Chino Yray · 19 years ago

I do turn it off. I have lots of stuff to download but I still turn it off when we go to sleep. But if it’s daylight and I’m just in school or work or any meeting…

it’s ON. the whole day.

Aggie · 19 years ago

We dont turn our PC off either, we usually shut it down once a week, and I had issues with this before with my husband because I thought we were eating so much electricity! It turns out I am wrong :D