How
long do you leave your computer on - a few hours at a time? a day
at a time? a week?
The way people use the computer has changed drastically over the
past 6-7 years. In the mid-90s, it was a business machine, an
educational tool, a word processor, a place to get your email.
By the late 90s, companies like AOL started offering instant
messaging clients. This allowed non-AOL users to "instant message"
their friends without having to sign up for America Online itself.
The advent of "away messages" meant that people would leave their
computer on and their IM programs running while they went to
lunch.
With cable Internet showing up in the late 90s and becoming
popular 3-4 years ago, this gave people an excuse to leave their
home computers on even longer. They could leave their IM clients
open with an away message letting their friends know that they went
out to see a movie and won't be back until 10 p.m.
For the most part, the operating systems of 5-6 years ago
weren't really up to being left on for so long. Windows 98, for
example, frequently developed little bugs after being on for a day
or two, and the computer would then end up crashing.
Mac OS 9, 8, and the rest would gradually slow down and
display memory errors if many applications had been opened and then
closed. Restarting was the best way to fix it.
Today, most people seem to leave their computers on constantly.
When so much of our lives seems to revolve around something on the
computer, why turn it off?
My blue G3 has been on for 12
days and 36 minutes, according to the very useful 'uptime' command.
Type that in your Mac OS X terminal, and you'll immediately be
told how long your computer's been running, how many users are
logged in, and load averages.
Mac OS X is designed to be left on all the time. As many
have noted, it is set to automatically perform many maintenance
tasks during the night. While OS X may not be as easy to crash
as the classic Mac OS, it's still not perfect. I find that it tends
to slow down a bit after a couple weeks. Sometimes it's not
noticeable, so I wait until it gets slow before I restart.
I once had my PowerBook running for 46 days before I restarted
it.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, Windows XP still has issues with
being left on. Most obviously these days, there's all the spyware
and network attacks that can come upon your machine while you're
not expecting it. Some cable companies suggest turning off your
Windows PC while you're not using it in order to help protect
against hackers.
Then again, the number of times you may have to restart Windows
in a day will probably make you want to turn it off after you're
done. My PC tends to develop errors with the sound card drivers -
the sound stops working, and I have to restart. This generally
happens at least once a day.
I suppose that's not as bad as a friend's PC who seems to
restart on an average of 2-3 times a day. It's still a huge
improvement over Windows 95/98 (especially early versions), which
often gave the infamous 'blue screen of death'.
![Color Classic]()
Power management has gotten much
more sophisticated over the years. The compact Macs (except the Colour Classic) all had a power
switch in the back. You could have the computer on or off. Later
machines added a low-power function, which put specific parts of
the computer, such as the display and hard drive, to sleep after a
specified amount of time. The PCI-based Macs added a genuine sleep
option, which was available in the Apple menu. This was a great aid
for those who wanted to leave their machine on but didn't want to
worry about the energy the machine was using.
The newer Macs put the power switch in the back (the Mac mini,
eMac, iMac), a hint that the way people have used computers has
changed again - or at least that Apple would like people to
change.
Face it: Some will always turn off the computer when they're
done using it. Others will always leave it on. If nothing else, the
fact that Apple's done that and gotten away with it shows a greater
acceptance of the 'always-on' computer.
