There is a great little FREE program I use called AMP WinOFF. It lets you shut the computer down based on several factors. I use it at home and at work.



WinOFF

Good Luck.

Thanks for the tip Jameson. I'm gonna try that WinOFF.

~Dries.

Relatedly, is it true or more an old wive's tale that you shouldn't shut your PC off (say, overnight)?

I hate the looooong start-up and potential FW issues associated with a reboot, so I tend to leave mine on 24/7. My girlfirend asked me last night "Why don't you turn it off?" (in response to my lamenting the NYC heat of late and the temps of my external drives approaching 110 degrees consequently).

I told her "You know, I don't know."

So, what should I know? :D

- jim

There are strong arguments on both sides of the issue. Personally, I leave our computers on 24/7.

On my laptop, I use the "hibernate" feature, which writes the entire contents of ram to hard drive, then powers down. The benefit is that the system can come back up in a matter of seconds. You might want to try that with your PC.

Relatedly, is it true or more an old wives's tale that you shouldn't shut your PC off (say, overnight)?

It is one of the most amazing wives' tale of all time.

It is true that when you turn on your equipment, there is a power surge, but guess what, those of us with EE degrees designed the equipment to accommodate that surge! Same with the torque required to get the disk drive going.

In this day and age of skyrocketing fuel (and therefore electricity) prices, the one thing I know for sure is that if you are leaving your computer on when you don't use it, you're wasting electricity -- lots of it. Also, the fans will clog up faster, and since most people don't clean their fans, this will cause overheating.

As for boot times, you should clean out all that garbage so the computer boots up quickly. Mine boots in less than 30 seconds from a cold start. I have exactly one icon next to the clock (the volume control). When I do a Ctrl-Alt-Del to bring up the XP task manager after boot, I only have five processes under my user name, most associated with my ATI card.

Anyway, turn your computer off. It will be just fine, and you'll save yourself some money on electric bills.

Here's a link to the US Department on Energy information on the subject:

When to Turn Lights and Computers Off to Save Energy and Money