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Is it better to sleep or turn off your iMac
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I put or let it sleep but I will restart it about once a week, if I don't turn it off, to clear out the page outs and other stuff that builds up.
Sleep or Shutdown
I put mine to sleep through the day and shut down at night. For those wondering about power consumption, I have the April '08 20" iMac plugged into a power meter. It tells how many watts the computer is generating. When it's asleep, the reading goes to zero. So sleeping won't run up your electric bill. Also, reducing the brightness on the screen will reduce consumption by about 20 watts moving from the highest setting to about 2 notches.
I put mine to sleep through the day and shut down at night. For those wondering about power consumption, I have the April '08 20" iMac plugged into a power meter. It tells how many watts the computer is generating. When it's asleep, the reading goes to zero. So sleeping won't run up your electric bill. Also, reducing the brightness on the screen will reduce consumption by about 20 watts moving from the highest setting to about 2 notches.
for the most part, it won't do any damage to just continually put the computer to sleep. it's what i do too.
it's a good idea to turn it off for a few hours (i turn mine off overnight every now and then) every month or so to give some of the components a break. i'm not sure exactly why, but one of the techs at my work suggested this, citing that it would extend the lifespan of the computer. (i work for an apple reseller in australia)
also, although it may not show up on power meters, your mac uses approximately 1w every hour when asleep.
not very much, but if you turn it off every night instead of sleeping it, you'll save about $300 over the course of the year in power bills! (at least in australia, you'll have to do your own calculations)
it's a good idea to turn it off for a few hours (i turn mine off overnight every now and then) every month or so to give some of the components a break. i'm not sure exactly why, but one of the techs at my work suggested this, citing that it would extend the lifespan of the computer. (i work for an apple reseller in australia)
also, although it may not show up on power meters, your mac uses approximately 1w every hour when asleep.
not very much, but if you turn it off every night instead of sleeping it, you'll save about $300 over the course of the year in power bills! (at least in australia, you'll have to do your own calculations)
I don't know what kind of energy prices you pay over there, but I pay $0.12 per kilowatt/hour. That translates to:
1 watt x 24 hrs a day x 365 days a year ÷ 1000 x $0.12 = $1.05
Thats if it were in sleep mode all day for a year, unless my math is wrong.
1 watt x 24 hrs a day x 365 days a year ÷ 1000 x $0.12 = $1.05
Thats if it were in sleep mode all day for a year, unless my math is wrong.
I don't know for sure, but my guess would be he uses a blank screen saver, and sets a corner hots pot to turn the screen saver on.
Agreed !!! With the computer, the external drives, the monitors, external DVD burner on.... those kilowatt hours add up. I shut everything each night.
Plus, a friend of mine and my cousin have both left their iMacs on since day one, with minimal restarts, and they both had hard drive failures 2+ years later... (Luckily, they both had Apple Care)
Unless you're downloading files or converting them, I see no advantage to keeping them on ALL the time, imo... I mean, most Macs take less than a minute to start up, right?