Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Technical Help and How To's How long can a Laptop stay on?

My Question is if anyone knows the answer to this is how long can you keep a laptop turn on? Is it okay to keep it turned on 24/7 like a desktop?

I turn my laptop off everytime I leave home but would it be okay to keep it on.

I've notice with my mobile broadband that the longer I keep it on the less data usages I go through. I think turning it on an off alot takes alot of my data usages up.

I've never tried it with a laptop. Generally speaking, though, the mechanics in a laptop's fan might be more susceptible to wear mainly because of their size. No idea about today's harddisks, though. Probably not much difference there.

As for the data card/stick: If the laptop (or more precisely the card) heats up noticeably, it can affect the throughput. Some of those can be incredibly funky.

I'd recommend using the stand-by mode.

Michael

Thanks Micheal I'll just keep turning it off when I'm not home. I don't want to over heat my laptop.

Um... I've had mine on since November...

More or less...

It does get shut occasionally but hibernating not turned off...

I did that with my old one as well - left it on all the time. It was a little over 2 years old when it got milk spilled on it :p . The HD was starting to get a bit wonky but not too bad. My neighbor owns a computer store and said he's never met anyone harder on laptops than me... He also said they're made to be more like desktops today than they used to be... Just leave it on a hard flat surface rather than on a thick blanket etc where it'll over heat .

I turn mine off overnight maybe once a week. Otherwise, it just goes into sleep mode.

My Mac Laptop is on 24/7. The only problem is the battery doesn't last as long because overnight it is on continual charge.

My old HP laptop used to run 24/7 too... just depends whether you want to do that or not.. we only have laptops in our house soooo... *shrugs*

How does one put and laptop in sleep mode I forgotten I had a Dell laptop in it keep over heating all the time even when it was in sleep mode so I stopped using sleep mode and now I can't remember how to use it. How do you wake the laptop up from it?

You should have an option to 'sleep' which basically turns off but leaves everything as is - doesn't shut your programs down etc. It's the same thing that happens when you close the lid. You restart it by pushing the power button...

Edit - yeah I meant sleep not hibernate...

I'm assuming you are using Vista:

You can go to the Start menu (the Windows button), and to the right of that RED button that looks like a power button there is probably a right-pointing arrow. Click on that and a list should appear. "Sleep" should be one of them. On my XPS M1530, when the computer is on Sleep Mode (and the lid is open), I just press the Power button and it comes back.

There is, also, the Hibernation option, but I don't like to use that (computer would turn on by itself at odd times).

Hope this helps.

malu

P.S.: Carol, closing the lid may have different actions depending on each user's settings.

Here's a little bit of information on power settings on Vista, things like how to change what your computer does when you close the lid, what that red button on the Start menu does, etc.

Go to Control Panel, Power Options (in Classic View), or click on "Change battery settings" under Mobile PC.

On the selected "power plan", click on "Change plan settings".

Right here you can change after how much time the computer turns off the display or puts the computer to sleep automatically.

If you click on "Change advanced power settings", you get a different window with many more options. Click on the "+" symbol by "Power buttons and lid" and a submenu appears. For each option you may want to change (Lid close action, Power button action, Sleep button action, Start menu power button), click on the corresponding "+" symbol; more info shows. You can change the actions depending if you're on battery or plugged in, by clicking on the blue text and selecting your choice from the drop-down list. You might have there "Do nothing", "Sleep", "Shut down" (and depending on your configuration, also "Hibernate").

Click on OK to save your changes and you're done.

Notice that the "Start menu power button" is the red button on the Start menu I mentioned.

If you have your computer set to "Sleep" and the lid is closed, opening the lid should bring it back on.

A little note on Hibernation: if you cannot find that option on your list, it might be disabled. If you really want to use Hibernation instead of Sleep, I can give more details on how to re-activate it.

malu