I turn it off every night, except if I am downloading a large file. Power is expensive, computers use a lot of power, and it just generally makes a lot of noise.

My desktop-replacing laptop is always on unless it's being transported. The power supply is only 60W and it probably uses less than half of that when idling and the lid is closed (LCD off). When it idles the CPU is scaled down to like 20Mhz or so.

i turn mine off when i'm going to be gone for more than five hours cuz i figure that i can save a bit of electricity and even the what 2hr i loose turing it off for that ammount of time isnt such a big deal because i'm going to replace it every year or so....

I can hear that shit :)
Most people I've told never believe me, either! I think TVs are worse too, they got a slightly lower pitch I believe.

But I rarely turn my comp off, tho my monitor sleeps after 20 mins. I'll shut my PC off if I'm going out of town, though. Also I've always believed that it's best to keep your hard disks spinning -- they definitely have the lightbulb effect working against them. HDD's always seem to fail when spinning up or down -- I've never heard of a disk grinding to a halt after constantly spinning in a server for year(s) or more, for example....

I too can hear it. My whole family thinks im nuts, but I can tell if the TV upstairs is on as soon as I walk in the front door, even if said TV is on mute. Its the whine!

But yeah, I do turn of the monitor and the amp for the speakers. But nothing else :)

I thought I was the only one... It is good to know I'm not going totally insane.

I guess its just a habbit to turn it off when I am done using it.
I would get yelled at by my stupid sister in law if I left it on cause she likes all the lights off all the tv's any thing like that she thinks will make the bill go up, but its her using her hair dryer, washing machine, shower, and she is always cold so the heater is always on, she does not know that the heater makes the bill go up too.
If it was my house I would leave it on but if I was gone for a long time like a week or so I would turn it off.

Yeah - my wife thinks I'm nuts when I tell her I can hear these things. That's why I put my computers in seperate rooms. I don't keep any machines in my bedroom and only 1 laptop in the living room (my Ti).

I always turn mine off before bed & back on first thing in the morning. I never had any issues.

What do people think about hibernation? I mormally leave it on all the time except if my room's too warm when i'm sleeping then I'll hibernate it.

I used to leave my PC on all the time. Then it caught on fire while I was gone and melted the motherboard and almost burnt down my house. Now I still leave it on. Oh well, some habits you just can't break!

-Lasereth

i'm just wondering how all your systems perform with it on all the time?
i've heard that windows should be rebooted every 48 hours or so to clear the memeory cache or something :P

that being said, i usually leave my computer on from the moment i wake up till i go to bed, if i'm dl'ing something then i leave it on overnight but usualy my parents get annoyed at me for 'wasting electricity' :(

I usually shut down, if I'm going out/to bed, otherwise it's on. If I've been doing some heavy stuff, copying/burning, I'll restart to free up resources.

Wow, and I thought I was nuts cause I can hear those damn things all the time. I'll ask the wife "didn't you realize the tv is on", she replies "no, it has a black screen so I thought it was off", I say "can't you here the high pitch noise?", her "no". :-/

I put it into hibernate. One of the benefits of XP (Only Home....I know, I know...). The monitor does go off, though. A question - How often should one clean one's computer?

turned off my crash box this morning before I left for work, then realised when I got gome that I needed a link on there when browsing on another forum. Argh, good reminder for me of why it usually stays on.

My computers stay on 24/7. I have a computer with remote access. That way if I'm on the road and want to record a TV show, I can log into my RDP box, then use VNC to get to the box with the 9600 PRO AIW and hit the record button on the guidelist. I can also use RDP to log into my machine locally here and use frontpage (I know, I know) to update my website. That way, I just have to have the RDP client on my jumpdrive to get into my personal boxes from anywhere with a broadband connection.

I leave it on 24/7, unless I'm going to be gone for more than a day or there is a thunderstorm.

i turn mine off when im not using it. it boots up really quick anyways.

my powerbook is always on...in fact the uptime is...
20:06 up 10 days 23:45, 3 users, load averages: 0.96 1.19 1.06
:)

yep mine is a noisy sucker humms like a reactor

The main reason it was recommended to NOT turn off your computer was that the OLDER HW wore out faster because of the repeated bootup/shutdown process. With HW improvements as they are, its no longer necessary.