ms-demeanor:

ms-demeanor:

This is kind of difficult to answer because I’m not sure what your definition of “switching it off” is – a lot of people THINK they’re turning their computer off but they’re really just closing the lid of the laptop or putting the computer to sleep.

Most people do NOT turn off their computers these days, just like most people don’t turn off their phones. They leave work at the end of the day and the computer goes to sleep, the screensaver starts due to inactivity and they go to bed, they close the lid to get the light to go away, and then it’s all awake in the morning just by touching a button or jiggling a mouse.

Actually *shutting down* your computer will close out of the programs and documents that you were in, will shut down your browser, will get rid of a bunch of temp files, will clear up RAM that was being used to run background processes.

Actually fully *TURNING OFF* your computer is the equivalent to pulling out the battery or unplugging a desktop (which is not to say that you should turn off your computer by yanking the battery or the plug; go through the normal shutdown process just make sure the power is off). You have totally shut down power to the device, it is Not On. It is Not Asleep. And most people don’t do that very frequently.

You also don’t NEED to do it frequently! Most modern computers are FINE running a bunch of shit in the background but turning your computer off every few weeks will make sure that you’re not having heating issues due to a bunch of resources getting gobbled up by background programs.

Responding to replies and reblogs:

If you do a full shut down, like you select the “shut down” option and it powers off you don’t need unplug it or pull the battery; it’s not necessary, that should be totally turned off.

EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE THEIR COMPUTERS PLUGGED INTO A SURGE PROTECTOR. IF THERE IS A POWER SURGE AND YOU ARE NOT PLUGGED INTO YOUR SURGE PROTECTOR THAT CAN KILL YOUR COMPUTER. AND A SURGE PROTECTOR IS *GOOD* BUT A UPS IS *IDEAL*

The reason most people don’t turn their computers off is that we now treat our computers kind of like we treat our cellphones – you may walk away from it for twenty minutes then realize you want to look something up but you don’t want to spend three minutes on the start up (or deal with up to TWO HOURS if your computer decides to run updates on that particular start-up).

Restarting your computer all the time isn’t good or bad for it – your computer should be able to handle turning on and off frequently OR infrequently with relatively few problems.

“Training” modern lithium ion batteries isn’t really a thing you need to do/worry about.