generally, if they aren't going to be used for several hours i'd shut them down. it will not only save electricity but overall will likely make them last longer. for one thing, they are far less vulnerable to power surges when turned off, and these often occur during night time thunderstorms and early am when the power companies do maintenance that may create surges/outages.
rebooting definitely does delete some of the "garbage" type of files from many applications, and it makes sure they all get shut down. if people are careless about stopping programs you can easily wind up with many of them running in the background using up memory and generally making things less stable. students are very likely to do this. if i were a student i would reboot before using the machine for these reasons. it also releases all the memory, many applications have "memory leaks" which result in them sucking up more and more memory. rebuilding the desktop frequently is always a good idea, it solves a multitude of problems. if you are running os 9.x periodically deleting the "finder preferences" is also a good idea as it tends to get corrupted and cause various problems, it's automagically recreated on reboot when you delete it. rather than periodically reinstalling everything which is somewhat painful, it's better to get them set up the way you want them and make a backup cd, you can then just wipe the hard drive and drag over the contents of the cd. if they are networked there is shareware called "assimilator" which will let you restore the configuration of each machine on a daily or as needed basis so that all the machines are identical, and so that student installed software will go away. i think there are a couple other such programs as well. try the popular shareware sites like versiontracker.com etc. also, you should definitely run something like norton at least once a week to maintain the file system. i'd also recommend getting some anti virus software and running it frequently, some anti virus software has an option to immediately check new files for viruses, this is a good idea when you have many different students of varying skill levels using the machines and likely bringing disk in from home which may have "interesting" things on them, virus or otherwise. also another good reason to clone the machines frequently. Stephen Gerke wrote: > > Good Afternoon. > > I'm wondering about our school monitoring a lab of 20 networked Beige G3 Desktops. >This past year they have been kept running day and night. Obviously for the electric >bill, it would make sense to turn them off. But I was told by someone that used to >work there that they SHOULD be turned off at the end of each night because the >rebooting deletes the "garbage" files and otherwise helps keep things in order. He >also suggested "rebuilding the desktop" and periodically reinstalling everything. ------------- -- Philip Stortz, mad scientist at large. --Every 13 seconds an American gun owner uses a firearm in defense against a criminal. gun ownership deters crime, it doesn't increase it. gun control increases crime and cost lives. <http://www.pulpless.com/gunclock/framedex.html> -- G-List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- We have Apple Refurbished Monitors in stock! | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> G-List list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml> Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/g-list%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Macintosh? Get free email and more at Applelinks! <http://www.applelinks.com>
