Computer Use

Your desktop should have more than enough cooling potential. Using it 15 hours a day should not hurt it. It will however seem to fail sooner since the components are only good for so much. You will just happen to meet one of these thresholds sooner. Graphics cards under constant high end use will usually fail first.

Keep the fans clean and you'll be fine.

Dust is one of the great killers.

Clean your case out periodically.

You beat me to it, good advice.

Keep plenty of ventilation around your computer; as far as leaving it on, mine is on 24/7 with the exception of bad weather (lightning). my personal preference is to leave it on, as components with soldered connections and or mechanical connections will over time, deteriorate in their efficiency. they may still work, but not 100% of rating (microscopic residue and moisture). This caused by heating and cooling of components.

This why sometimes when troubleshooting..........you say to yourself, "all I did was unplug it and plug it back and now it works ??" As long as you are satisfied that the system is not in danger of running above limits, don't worry about it.

Now for having that much seat time, I would recommend as large of a monitor size as I could afford; it is much better on your eyes and your fatigue levels. You will be much more efficient with a larger screen.

oldgolfer

Hello oldgolfer,

What is you consideration of UPS use?

Thanks

I do not use one; back up everything on a regular basis. we do not have brownouts or real bad weather here that would or could cause power failures. In fact, we have only had one in about 6 or 7 years.

However, they may be a good idea in your area; please remember though, they usually only have enough reserve to allow you to save and "secure" you data. the one that I threw away was only good for 10 minutes of backup.

I read a study back in the day (386 - 486 days) that showed a surprising side effect of a UPS. The study group on UPS's showed less of the strange little problems that PC's seem to exhibit from time to time. The writer theorized that it could be due to the UPS acting as a filter, giving more stable power to the PC. This may be negated by more modern power supplies, but from my experience, my own PC's seem to have behaved better since I started using a UPS. Of course there are many variables: OS, motherboard, CPU, etc..., so this might all be completely irrelevant. But, the way I see it, I don't think I'll ever wish that I WASN'T using one.

I too have noticed seemingly smoother processing using a UPS, may it be less noise which the energy departments have indicted will continually increase.

For years I did not use a UPS. Then I got tired of frequent brown outs in the area I live in now and bought one. I have not regretted it in the least. The plus side is that if the power goes off my base station to my wireless phone is plugged into the UPS also and I still have phone service. Of course, when the power goes out I shut down everything I can within a reasonable amount of time but I don't loose any data anymore because of power outages. I would highly recommend one to anyone that does any serious computing. (or any kind of computing for that mattter)

Expect a life factor reduction of 50% on the computer....less on self////////////

MR. GUY

Opposed to 100% increase of computer life factor if not turned on.

My system that I am on right now is almost 7 years old; it has never had anything done to it other than to add a 250 Gb Seagate HDD to replace an 80 Gb Western Digital, and I bumped the memory up to 1 Gb of Kingston ValueRam. These changes were simply choices and not because of any failure.

Yes, a UPS does indeed act as a filter; please see the address below for a good explanation:

http://www.natecsystems.com/96nov-decUPS.html

oldgolfer

Nice article. This validates my plugging anything connected to the computer into the UPS!

Computers are developed to run 7/24. People are not...

Regards.

The lucky ones where even Brown-outs are seldom, you can keep it on 24/365(6)/Cs/M/ unless it is out of date.

But how the others; having Outages 5-6/24; can keep it ON.

After every boot scanning of 2/3 drives, some bad files & links deleted during scan ?

And how-long Laptops' battery can suvive? However it is safe & can be shut-down properly.

Ther is another problem in my laptop; if hibernated due to low battery it stucks while resuming when power is back.

Niether it boot nor shuts down.

I have to disconnect battery for a while & reconnect [Aapter unplugged], connect Adapter to boot.

And even outage of total power it RESUMEs. How astonishing it is?

Any geek to advise?

Thanks

What O/S and version?

XP Home Edition, updated to Sp3.

Thanks & regards

Laptop hangs on resume from hibernation.

Disable hibernate (reset after) - reduce page file size to minimum about 300MB - schedule a diskchk upon next reboot - run disk cleanup maybe corrupted hibernation will be deleted - reboot - after diskchk - defrag - reboot. Enable hibernate.

If works then delete all but most recent restore point - defrag - reboot.

Thanks & regards

Ubetcha! Remember to reset page file about 3000MB and defrag RAM occasionally too.

http://www.bumperspecialties.com/new/index_selections.html

keep that laptop spaced-out and cooler

Regards.

Noted please.

I have already have fitted app 1-1/2" hi feet & using a indigenous Stand having a cooling fan. Additionaly HDD & CPU Cover removed to reduce heating.

Regards for advise

I always adjust laptop to hibernate on disk cache. This might be allowed by checking-on at power supply menu items. When any brown- blackout occurred I disconnect/turning-off any network devices then unplug all USB ones (mouse include) and force laptop to sleep down through Function->sleep buttons.

I'd advice you to conduct some experiments to secure a proper laptop's behavior.

In any cause when laptop hangs out before applying that undesirable battery-out measure try out to hold pushed down a power-button for quite long (more than 10 sec). Hope it works. It's more healthy for laptop, to say the least.

If you talk to a lot of PC technicians then you will get mixed answers on whether or not your PC will last longer if you turn it off or keep it on. No one can really say for sure because both sides of the argument are very intriguing. If you turn your PC off every night then your computer may fail due to spinning up the drives or applying a slightly higher voltage to turn everything on. If you keep it on then you get people who say that heat and constant voltage will start to break things down.

To tell you the truth I have been working on PC's for a while and while I don't know the answer to that problem I have found that the main killer of PC's is the user and negligence.

GA

As you read the instructions you may overlook the fact that though the basic instructions include turning the unit on they do not indicate turning it off

No why should it a lot of computers run 24/7.