computer question

When I'm not using the computer, should I shut down the whole thing? Let's say I'm at home, and I know I'll be checking in on the style forum a couple of times that night over a period of 7 hours. Is it wise to not shut down the whole computer, but leave it on and then connect to the internet when i want to check in. Somebody told me this is bad for the hard drive of the computer. So, even if I knew I wanted to go back onto the internet in an hour, I should always turn the computer off.

And, right now, whenever I do get off the internet, I need to hit the reboot key on the computer. Before, when I shut closed the webpage, it would ask if I wanted to be on the internet. It no longer does, so I need to reboot or otherwise my phone line would get all tied up. Does anybody know what happened, and how I can get off the internet without rebooting the computer? Any help to this issue would also be greatly appreciated.

When you connect to the internet, is there an icon in the bottom right corner of your screen? It would look like two computers with screens that blink during internet activity. If so, you can double click on that and it will give you the option to disconnect. If you don't have that icon, there is some way to enable it for sure but I don't know how. There also might be an option in Internet Explorer that decides whether that window appears when you quit.

I leave my computer on all day long, and everyone I know who knows a thing or two about computers does the same. My roommate last year was a complete computer psychopath, and he would leave his running 24/7. In fact, I've never heard anything before about it being harmful to your hard drive - sounds like something that may have been a problem in the 80s or something. The only reasons I would turn off a computer is because the RAM gets free'd up, the fan isn't making noise, it's not using electricity, and the CPU can cool down.

This is a topic not settled. On one hand the computer consumes energy when running, wears out the hard drive and fans and is vulnerable to its environment such as the internet. A reboot can also freshen up the operating system, especially the older ones such as Windows 98 and ME.

On the other hand, moderns OS do not need to be rebooted regularily and they have built-in firewalls to protect them from the internet. They can also shut down the hard drives after periods of inactivity and turn off the monitor. There are also speculations that it is not very healthy for the components to cool down after shutdown and warm up again repeatedly.

I leave my computers on almost all the time. The laptops I suspend, but the one in my den I keep running all the time.

The only exception are computers in a corporate environment. I always reccomend that they are turned off at the end of a workday because a reboot triggers all kinds of administrative processes for the IT department. Many changes to the policy governing the computer don't come into effect untill it's rebooted.

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