Brand new imac - do i turn it on or off or put it to sleep?

I would let it go to sleep. It is much faster to get started when you want to get going. I even let my PCs sleep.
As for the wear and tear, I have almost no experiences with the Mac, but with PCs I have seen them die being used both ways, most recently a PC that never gets shut off died in the middle of the night. Part of the reason I switched to a Mac. I needed a new computer and was getting tired of the Windoze way of life.

My iMac and MBP are my 7th and 8th Macs. I've used most of them daily, letting them sleep while not in use during the day and shutting them down every night and have never had a problem of "wear and tear" or any other boot up/shut down problem.

I have had my macbook for about 2 years and my Imac for about a year. I have never shut them down, just restarted them after updates and the still work flawlessly!!

Hi and Welcome to Apple Discussions...

It's perfectly safe to leave your iMac in Sleep mode unless you live in an area that is subject to electrical storms. To be on the safe side, use a surge protector.

In order for your iMac to run background maintenance tasks you should leave the computer on at least one night a week. This can be done in Sleep mode. Here's more information. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2319?viewlocale=en_US These tasks are scheduled for 03:15 to 05:30 in your computer's local time zone.

It's less wear and tear to allow the iMac to Sleep over turning it off every night.

There are times when you will be notified of Software Updates and on occasion a restart is required.







Carolyn 🙂

Hello soupy:

Welcome to Apple discussions.

A sleeping Mac requires very little energy. I always sleep mine. I never turn them off unless I am out of town for a couple of days.

One addition. If you sleep a Mac, it will perform the background tasks that were scheduled while it was asleep when it wakes up. It is NOT necessary to leave it on 24x7. If, however, you shut it down, the background "cron" tasks will be skipped.

Barry

Carolyn,

so what is the wear and tear supposed to be? As I said, I've never had a problem (since 1994) and I prefer having it off when I don't need it for 10 hours or more. And Onyx does a fine job with the maintenance tasks.

Hi Barbara:

This is not meant as an argument (olive branch in teeth) - just more information.

There is a school of thought that repetitive on/off of electronic devices shortens the mean time between failures. I am in that school myself - probably because I started working with computers over 50 years ago. As far as I know, the "school" is anecdotal as I have not seen any qualitative evidence in support of that point of view.

On the maintenance thing, however, I will state (definitively) that there is little reason to run routine maintenance on Macs running OS X (with Onyx, Cocktail, or anything else) except as noted in my post above. Since you shut your system down, the routines that are time-dependent will not execute as scheduled.

Regards (also from the Pacific NW),

Barry

+There is a school of thought that repetitive on/off of electronic devices shortens the mean time between failures.+

I know - I've heard the pro and con arguments before and I prefer turning it off just as I turn off the light when I leave the room.... and I wouldn't call turning anything on/off once a day repetitive (olive branch handed back).

As for the maintenance tasks, they do not run automatically in Tiger if the Mac is off and only intermittently if it's left on, so I do it manually with Onyx. There was a never ending thread on this subject some years back and the consensus seemed to be that it was best to run Onyx (or similar). I understand you no longer need to worry about it with Leopard, but I have Tiger by choice.

Ah, Renton - my best friend used to work there and I lived in Mill Creek; now I'm in (America's) Vancouver.

Hi Barbara:

Thank you for taking my post the right way. Sometimes I come off as preachy and put people off!

You are absolutely correct about the background tasks not running on schedule in OS X 10.4. I did exactly what you are doing when I was using Tiger. I have been using OS X 10.5 since the early days. I think Apple fixed the initiation thing about OS X 10.5.2 or so.

Come join us in the Leopard word. I sound like a commercial, but there is a LOT of functionality that is really nice.

Barry

We have a good friend who lives in Camas - just down the road from you.

I actually own two ⚠ Leopard upgrade disks which came with both the iMac and the MBP. I got all excited and installed it immediately - 48 frustrating hours later, I started over with an erase and install (Tiger). I do not appreciate some of the "features", e.g.:
when I click on a folder in the dock, I want the resulting window in column view - period - immediately, not several clicks later (takes several clicks in Leopard and I do not appreciate having to sift through 200 pretty and completely useless icons trying to find a file),
I want to be able to make custom icons for my folders for easy identification which remain as custom icons in the dock (not so in Leopard)
I could not search my entire hard drive (Macintosh HD) in Leopard - it only allowed certain search parameters,
don't need Time Machine - I have a backup regimen and prefer to be in charge of the machine (I also disable any/all "automatic updates")!

That said, I'll be checking out the new one in September to see if they're gotten rid of any of my "pet peeves".

It's obvious that Apple intends for people to use sleep instead of shutting down. Why would they put the power button in such a hard to reach location, if it was intended to be used every morning?

Personally, I use display sleep, but my iMac itself stays on continuously.

Kenichi Watanabe wrote:
It's obvious that Apple intends for people to use sleep instead of shutting down. Why would they put the power button in such a hard to reach location, if it was intended to be used every morning?

Personally, I use display sleep, but my iMac itself stays on continuously.

Here is an excerpt from Mac Help searching for "display sleep":

+Click Schedule in Energy Saver preferences to schedule a time for your computer to shut down to make sure it's turned off when you're not working.+

Obviously, I'm not as knowledgeabe as many others here, but I'll keep shutting it down at night; according to Apple's Energy Usage Calculator, I'm saving about $10 per month.

Agreed. Sleep would be better labelled 'siesta'.

If there is a subject where Mac users cannot agree, this is the one. I do the same as you Barbara: I leave it on in the daytime and shut it down at night when I go to bed. I use MainMenu for the maintenance tasks.

To me it's not only for economical reasons, it's also ecological concerns, especially now that computers are running hotter and hotter.

One day I asked myself why use up electricity when not absolutely necessary and I started shutting down my Macs. I never had any problems with them. People told me it would kill my hard drives but +knock on wood+ it has never happened so far in all these years.

I think we can now put this argument to sleep (pun intended) - the OP no doubt has gotten the message by now that we cannot agree on this subject (and I'm glad to hear there's at least one kindred soul out there)....