How long can you keep a laptop on for?

With my desktop I keep it on 24/7 and never really bothered to look up if it did any long term damage. I've done this for about 5 years with the same PC.

Out of curiosity i'm wondering how long you can keep a laptop on? Is there a time limit before it does any long term damage? Or is it like a TV and it pretty much has no time limit?

 

well i keep my laptop on most of the time. even when i go to sleep. i just make sure it can "breeth". i also make it turn off the screen after a minute using the power profile button on my asus. dont want the screen to burn out.

 

It does not do "long term" damage per se, but it does take away from some theoretical "lifetime". I would not keep a notebook running 24/7 when not using. The reason is Desk tops run cooler (better cooling systems) and therefor take less toll on the theoretical lifetime. Also if something goes bad on desktop easier to replace parts do to modular assembly. Notebooks run hotter and more expensive to repair. Hibernation is a better option.

 

Nothing lasts forever, even TVs. Keeping an electronic device ON means that it will degrade over time. Heat is the main factor that makes components in devices degrade, the reason why you could keep your pc on 24/7 is that it doesnt suffer from heat problems unlike your laptop. Well long story short, as long you keep your laptop cool and obviously disable system standby and hibernation you can pretty much keep it ON for as long as you want.

 

think about the environment!

 

I personally don't leave my laptop on at night unless I am downloading something large and I really had to sleep. I simply don't like wasting electricity. Some engineers would argue that if you always turn your computer (or any electronic devices) on and off, on and off, it causes thermal fatigue and it actually lessen the device's life. I doubt the damage done by thermal fatigue would be realized by a computer user anyway since computers progress way too fast so that before any thermal fatigue is realized, you would have gotten a new computer anyway

 

well my desktop runs near 50 and its an old one. my laptop runs at that temp too. what would usually fail first because of heat on a portable?

 

If you keep it running all the time I would suggest you extract the battery...that is one of the components that degrades with high temperatures.

 

I let mine run for a few days at a time. But i do have it set to sleep after five mins of no activity. I also make sure it gets proper airflow at all times. I have a thinkpad and those things last near forever.

 

i have mine running most of the time. not 24/7 constantly, but usually 4 or 5 days straight. it might reduce the life of the laptop. but i think a more limiting factor for its life expectancy is physical damage from dropping it, spilling things on it etc. i have had a desktop running non stop for the past 3 years and it hasn't had any problems.

however as someone said, turn the display of, whether it be an external one or not. and put it into hibernation or sleep, if your that worried about the power that it is using

 

i asked the same question on the thinkpad forums, and i was not surprised by the response.

almost everyone, probably 90% of the members who responded said they leave their thinkpad on 24/7. and for long periods of time. im talking MONTHS, and someone even left theirs on for a YEAR.
might seem unbelievable, but its true.

i know i literally left my computer on for a good 8-9 months w/o ever turning it off. i would reboot occasionally because of memory leaks, but the system was never turned off.

 

I keep mine on most of the time and have no problems. My standby is borked right now so it's been on 24/7 for over 2 weeks with no reliability or heat issues. My only advice is to go along with the suggestion of removing the battery. Heat kills batterys, so keeping it plugged into a warm laptop when not needed will kill it in less than 2 years. Also, if you don't use it for downloading overnight, consider putting it on standby. It takes less than 10 seconds to get back to your desktop and saves around 80-90% of the power.

 

I don't understand why some of you want to keep your laptop turned on for such long periods of time, what's the positive outcome you guys are seeking? Just wondering

 

i like that point too

 

i leave mine on cause i download a lot.

 

I understand if you are downloading, because if I'm downloading large files, I would leave it on too rather than just not sleep and stare at the screen. However, some people say they just put it to sleep...which I do not understand. I have never used the sleep function or the hibernate function other than if the battery died on me.

 

My old Compaq at home has power up problems, so if I switched it off and attempted to switch it back on, it would take about 20-30 tries before it takes (it would power off within a second) - so I've kept it on even pretty much 24/7.

 

Putting the computer to sleep has the advantage of saving power without the disadvantage rebooting.

Sleep = instant on + power savings

 

I did a little reading around the internet, most sources say that it's recommended to put your computer to sleep if you're not going to use it for 24 hours or less, and turn it off if you are not going to use it for longer periods of time. So is it safe to say that sleep mode is more prefered than turnin off the computer?

 

I would think that sleep mode is indeed much more preferable than shutting down.

I haven't shut this machine down for weeks, I just put it into sleep mode every night instead. I only shut down these days if it's a reboot for an installation or something along those lines.