You probably heard that turning off your computer for the night can be harmful for 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 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 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.
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.
Ycour 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’s
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.
It’s 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.
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