[thechat] Re: hardware issue - motherboard dies on power down after lengthy on period

[Kevin Stevens]

> (side note, but computers are made to run for long periods of time.. its
> worse for them to power up & down 4 times a day than to leave them on for
> 4 months straight. example: a machine here that had 455 days of uptime

This raises a couple of points that I have been meaning to ask for some
time.

1. Do most of you leave your machines on all the time? I am always worried
that the damn thing is going to catch fire the moment I leave the house.
This paranoia is, I feel, justified because I built it myself, and have no
faith in my own abilities. I have never heard of such a thing happening,
anybody got any horror stories they would like to share?

2. When I am not using it, my machine runs SETI. What is the likely power
comsumption from leaving it doing this for days on end. I have heard that it
is best to leave flourescent lights on because they comsume the equivalent
of 8 hours juice every time they are switched on. Would it be a similar
scenario with computers?

Kevin Stevens
kjs at ratking.co.uk