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Level 1

8 points

Sleep versus Shutdown

What's the thinking on shutting down versus letting the Mac go to sleep at the end of the day? I have been shutting down every night but a friend with a Mac says he never turns his off, just lets it go to sleep. Which causes the least wear and tear?

G5 iMac, Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Posted on May 10, 2006 1:21 PM

Best reply

Macsastic

Level 4

3,380 points

Posted on May 10, 2006 2:08 PM

This is a hottly debated subject heer on the forums. The answer is what ever works best for you is what you should do. I personally always sleep mine. I do this because I like to have the websites and pages up on my machine when the machine comes back up the next day. I dont think I have ever turned my iMac G5 off for more than a few minutes. I have had to restart it a few times to fix hanging programs and the like, but I don't think it really matters.

I should say, if you have one of the early imac G5's rev A or B maybe turning the machine off would be best. The heat those machines can put off for some owners might degrade the machine faster than a cooler running rev C or Intel model. But, that's not scientific or fact, just my opinion.

In the end, whatever works for you is the answer. I think Macs are made to run 24-7 and I personally know people with machines that have been running for years with no problems. In fact the OS is designed to take advantage of a machine that is always on. The maintenance programs built-in to Mac OSX run during those quiet times of the day when the machine isnt being used. So it may very well be, best to leave them on so that stuff gets done.

Good luck, hope that helped you.

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18 replies

AxL

Level 6

11,435 points

May 11, 2006 3:11 AM in response to Rod Hagen

848/3294

Hi Rod, Eric and All,

It is not completely fixed yet, although it works much better since 10.4.3.

"I didn't bother looking after that."

After that came some more results from our testings.
My version seems too complicated, that's probably why you didn't bother read it when I showed it to you sometimes:
- http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=1320152#1320152
You can have a read of an Australian's version, Peter Sealy, nicely and friendly put:
- http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=1384836#1384836
Then Dr. Smoke, see also from the developements and links in the above linked threads, as soon as from everybody's findings he is certain of the behaviour, updates his X-Lab FAQ and as usual, writes the best possible version, using a perfect English AND a most concise and clear technical style:
- http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/maintscripts.html#Anchor-How-35882

"I just assumed that we weren't going to get a fix under Tiger."

You were right in the end:
you still need to advise the manual running of the three periodic tasks.
We got ONE fix, but there originally were TWO different bugs.
The "delay bug" remains (10.4.6).

Cheers!
Axl

Rod Hagen

Level 7

32,000 points

May 11, 2006 5:12 AM in response to AxL

Thanks for that Axl,

Intriguing.

Looking at my own logs again I see that so far this month the daily script ran on:

3rd May
5th May
6th May
10th May (twice - I ran MacJanitor yesterday)
11th May

My weekly's ran every week, without fail (but at various times) , from April 1st to last weekend. I rarely go for more than a day or two without shutting down completely, and I almost certainly would have done so during a weekend.

They missed a couple of weeks before that though.

My monthly's have run every month , witout fail, on the first of the month since October, sometimes at the scheduled time (meaning I left the computer running,) but on other occasions it runs much later in the day than expected. (presumably meaning it had been sleeping or was shut down).

But I would, invariably shut down my computer several times between the 1st and 10th of the month, every month, so my figures don't seem to quite match the ones you mention in http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=1320152#1320152 In my case te monthly doesn't jump days, and seems to run later in the day on which it was originally scheduled.

All in all, intriguing stuff though, all the same.

Thank you for the update.

Cheers

Rod

Klaus1

Level 9

52,749 points

May 11, 2006 3:19 PM in response to Rod Hagen

Thanks much Rod, very useful info. Have downloaded Macjanitor and will run it later.

Sleep versus Shutdown