A little help on shut down please!

Sorry for posting such an already widely publisized thread, but Im really still up in the air about IN MY SCENERIO whether to shut down, hibernate or sleep at the end of each day. Heres the deal..

The laptop is a desktop replacement and is ALWAYS on AC power (in fact the battery has been in the fridge since day 1) I work from 7am to 7 pm M-F. Currently I turn the laptop (Vista 64 in sig) on around 7pm and fully shutdown after say 4 hours of running each night. I repeat the process each day. Obviously it spends most of its time turned off.

My question is this. Should I be shutting down every night? Am I causing uneeded wear and tear on my components by booting up and shutting down fully every single day? I currently have many vista tweaks done and I cut shutting down time to 10 seconds. SO booting up and shutting down time is not an issue (maybe 50 seconds to fully boot and 10 seconds to shut down). SInce the laptop is only on for a total of 4-5 hours a day, is shutting down the most effecient thing for me? Or should I be hibernating? Thing I have noticed is that hibernate takes longer to "hibernate" than my 10 second shut down? Plus doesnt hibernate take some disk space each time you use it (ie leavfe behind reminants that you may never find?) And lastly, theres sleep which I dont think fits my application/schedule.

SO some say to always hibernate and ONLY shut down maybe once a month or if you start witnessing lag in performance or if it freezes. Remember the laptop is on AC power...if I were to take it on battery, I would obviously sleep or hibernate.

Any help? Thanks and sorry for being so uneducated on this seemingly easy concept

 

Shutting down your computer every night is not going to add a significant amount of extra wear and tear on your machine. Neither is hibernating or sleeping. Just keep doing what you've been doing and help the US save some power

 

Sleep or hibernate if you have programs open that you are not bothered to close and you want to appear exactly as they were the last time you used your computer.

Sleep if you are going to leave your computer for a short-ish amount of time, in this state the computer is technically still on but consuming a minimal amount of power powering the RAM where programs are temporarily stored when they are running.

RAM requires power to be running to store information, the hard drive doesn't.

With Hibernate, programs are frozen in RAM and then the data is then copied from the RAM to the hard drive and the computer is powered off. You have 4GB of RAM and therefore time can be taken to copy up to 4GB of info to your hard drive.


In shutdown, all programs are closed and the computer is powered off.

 

Anything you do shouldn't affect the longevity of your laptop. Do whichever you like best. I've left mine on forever and its all good