Good/Bad to shutdown your computer at night?

[Chappy]

I Shut it down whenever I'm not going to be using it.

It used to be that hardware had only a limited cycle life, it could only be shut down and started a few 100 times before it would start failing and that's why the world got used to leaving their machines running 24/7, but that's not the case anymore.
Those who say things like "Thermal shock" from hot running to cold off state forget 2 very important things. First is that it doesn't get cold instantly, it cools gradually just like anything does, and it warms up in the same manner so the Thermal Shock argument is a Fallacy.
2nd thing is that these materials are designed and built to expand & contract with temperature changes, so this is enginneered into them and thermal shock again is a dead issue.
If you haven't guessed by now, Thermal Shock is the most common argument I hear for the Leave it running argument.

Also, Windows cleans up and runs fresher after a reboot, well proven fact even tho some may dispute it. A fresh booted machine is in it's best possible working state, no RAM held by poorly coded programs that didn't wanna let it go when it closed, things like that.
It's like a shower for your Windows install an it makes it all squeaky clean & fresh smelling..

 

[roy69]

Mine gets shut down when not in use. On avarage in the UK you will save over £100 by switching off the computer when not in use. These figures are for the avarage user and does not include folding and other activites.

 

[johngalt]

RE: Windows runs better on reboot - amen, brother. I never said I don't reboot, I just don't *shut down*.

Lately I will use KILLALL to kill off apps to lay a game, then end the night watching anime from the bed - and then I hit the power button on the remote and it goes to sleep.

The hourly wakeup is necessary as I am reporting ~800 unique attempts to enter my LAN (attacks on my IP on various ports by various machines) per day - so I am fighting back. I cannot beleive how many resolve to IP addresses linked to Shaw cable company in Canada....

I don't even turn the monitors off as they go into a low power mode themselves.

Adeang, if you want the machine to not sleep when downloading, enable WakeOnLAN feature in your BIOS if the BIOS supports it - but be warned, this may also have side effects of the computer randomly waking up because it receives some sort of traffic from your modem / router at all sorts of odd times, or it may never go to sleep again.