At 10:00 PM 20/08/02 -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >1. Do not sleep your mac. It wastes electricity and your mac is technically >still "on." > >2. Shut your Mac down every night when you go to bed. Your Mac has moving >parts in it. Would you idle your car in your driveway instead of shutting the >engine off?? I didn't think so.
Depends on your circumstances. If you're in an area with overhead power or phone lines, definitely a good idea to unplug for fear of lightning. However, for as long as there have been hard disks there has been the view, which I generally subscribe to, that leaving hard disks spinning rather than stopping and starting gives longer life -- I did that at my office when the power bill wasn't my problem and never lost a disk. We don't have any problems with power surges here. Turn the monitor off though, it does age the more it's on. Power supplies and fans will wear out faster, but they're very cheap to replace, and I've personally never had to anyway. Temperature changes also make heat stress on expanding and contracting (the chips as well as the disk), as well as the massive acceleration when a disk starts up. I'm always suspicious of car analogies with computers. I belive in Siberia you would leave your car running all the time to stop it freezing up -- not really much relevance to computers either way. >3. If you leave your Mac for a trip or something unplug it from a wall and >drape a garbage bag over it...in case the roof leaks or something. (just >kidding about the last part, but I have done it before when I had a questionable >rental). A friend of mine did that when moving house, didn't use his iMac for a few weeks. Doesn't boot at all now. I'm about to dismantle it to take out the CPU and RAM and dry it, see if that helps. Where I live we get extreme humidity -- up to 97% for days on end. Leaving a computer off in this climate for a few weeks can kill it -- fungus on the hard disk (no, I'm not joking), and general electric flakiness. Having it on keeps it dry, and the air flowing out rather than crap creeping in. Makes my monitor weird too -- almost totally black screen until it warms up and presumably dries out a bit. Thank God we're down to only 90% humidity now. -- 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>
