Should electronic devices be turned off at night? I get asked this question all the time, and the answer depends on the device and the person. There are times when you don’t want to turn off your computer or smartphone because something is running in the background.
On the other hand, frequent shutdowns can actually fix some weird little problems / glitches that start to occur if your computer or device has been turned on for a very long time.
In this article, I will try to highlight the various points and reasons why you can leave your device on or turn it off. There is no definitive answer to this question, but in general, turning off is a good thing that cannot damage your device.
Just like you turn your TV on and off every day, doing it on your PC, Mac, iPhone or iPad from time to time is not a bad idea.
When does your computer or Mac shut down
Let’s start with PC and Mac. So should you shut down your PC or Mac every night? Many people say that turning it on and off can damage your computer, but this is a myth.
Just search the internet and you will see that there is nothing wrong with turning your computer on and off if you don’t do it 10 times a day. It is also a myth that turning your computer on and off consumes more power than putting it to sleep. It’s actually the same thing.
So, here are some reasons why you should turn it off:
– If you leave the computer on, it consumes more power, especially if it is a desktop computer and does not enter a power saving mode such as sleep. Of course, if you look at the total energy consumption in your home, the computer is likely to consume only a small fraction of the total consumption.
Energy consumption is one of those things that people will argue about forever. I personally turn off my computer not because of power saving, but because it helps my computer run smoothly and I feel like it will last longer.
– Turning off your computer will extend its life by reducing the wear and tear on your components. When the computer is turned on, everything is powered, and the temperature of the memory chips, video card, processor, etc. is higher than if the computer was turned off.
– If your computer is equipped with a traditional spinning hard drive, shutting down will reduce the overall spinning of the drive and extend its lifespan. However, rotating discs have a second side. Since the drive takes some time to regain normal speed, forcibly stopping and then restarting can also cause more wear on the disc.
From what I’ve read, if you turn off your computer once a day or several times a week, you should be fine. However, if you turn it on and off several times a day, it may shorten the life of the hard drive, rather than extend it.
For an SSD (Solid State Drive), this is not such a big deal. You can turn it off and on as much as you like. SSDs wear out when written. SSDs also use a lot less power, so if you have to leave your computer on, it’s better to have an SSD as it uses less power.
Another thing to consider is that booting from an off state with an SSD is much faster, so shutting down is a good choice with an SSD too. Again, unless you do this 10 times a day.
– If your computer does absolutely nothing at night (downloads, converts, creates backups, etc.), then there really is no reason to leave it on. You can search the Internet for information about automatically shutting down your computer and find many programs that you can use to shutdown your computer at a set time so you don’t have to worry about it.
– If you are not using power saving modes, it is better to turn off the machine Power saving modes, such as turning off the monitor or hard drives, or putting the computer to sleep, are almost as good as shutting down, but if they aren’t turned on for whatever reason, shutting down is essential.
– Shutting down and restarting every day or once or twice a week can also help reset the operating system and make it smoother. Both Windows and Mac OS X have memory or whatever issues after a few days, and restarting always helps to improve the responsiveness of my system.
When does the iPhone or iPad turn off
Devices like the iPhone and iPad don’t look like a working PC or Mac. The components are completely different, and the way the devices work cannot be compared. Hence, you can’t just apply the same rules to shutdown your computer on an iPhone or iPad.
For iPhones and iPads, the only real reason you’ll ever need to turn it off completely is if the device isn’t working as it should and if you want more battery life. If your apps freeze or don’t open properly, etc., it is probably a good idea to shut down and restart your computer completely.
An Apple Genius employee told me that turning off your iPhone or iPad overnight will help extend battery life. Why? Because most people keep their phones connected to a charger all night long, and that doesn’t drain the battery.
Otherwise, you can leave them on all the time. IPhones and iPads have short sleep times and therefore don’t stay on for very long anyway. In addition, entering sleep mode will reduce the power consumption of the device.
The only other time I thought you’d want to shut down is if you really want to conserve battery power. Perhaps you are stuck somewhere and you have only 15% battery remaining. Even in sleep mode, the battery will be used. Thus, you can turn off the device to drain the battery.
For iPhone and iPad, if you just want to conserve battery power, you can also put your device into Airplane Mode, which turns off WiFi and 3G / 4G radios. In terms of extending the lifespan of your flash memory, it’s probably best to keep your iPhone or iPad powered on for as long as possible.
Since it uses flash memory, the more it writes to the disk, the shorter its lifespan. Turning the device on and off will likely result in additional reads and writes to storage, so just leave it on unless the OS starts to behave weird, which happens quite often these days.
The optimal configuration is probably to turn it off once at night if you don’t need it for important calls / emails (to extend battery life) and that’s it. It will take a lot of on and off times to really shorten the life of the drive, but the battery will definitely lose its luster faster, so turning it off can help.
Again, since people tend to use their phones at night, also for messages, emails, etc., keeping the device turned off is not a problem if it is inconvenient.
Conclusion
As you can see, there were a lot of If this, then do that, else in this post For each specific person, closing depends on what you value more. Generally, if you do want to shut down, do it no more than once a day. And if you do it once a day, it won’t damage your PC, Mac or any other device. I mostly shutdown and restart my devices due to software issues.
If you are not using your device or computer at night, it is best to turn it off. This will extend the lifespan of your PC / Mac and allow longer battery life on your iPhone or iPad. This is a hot topic of discussion, so what do you think about turning off every night?
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