Guys, this is a real post, what about your bills? or if you are a freak downloader guy? how much time you left your computer on? my friend left it 9 days, no shutting down, downloading and browsing sometimes the internet.!!

Tell me, what about you guys?

Ive left my computer on for maybe 2 weeks at the most downloading. I rarely shut off my pc, I just switch users so I can keep downloading. I occasionally set my pc to hibernate so it can turn on fast, but use no power.

I have many friends who leave their pcs on all week every week.
The only qualm that I have is that is probably uses up a lot of power (I have a Prescott p4 3.2ghz, and an ATI Radeon X800 128mb)
It would be much better if I used a laptop for this or a Mobile on Desktop form such as an mac mini.
Recently my pc has been ultra stable, adn hasnt had any problems at ALL even while being on pretty much 24/7 for weeks.

I believe this is due to my protection apps: Spybot Search and Destroy, AVG Antivirus Free Edition, Zone Alarm Free Edition, and Ad-Aware Free Edition.
I have been using this combination since January and it hasnt failed me yet!

Rarely do I power mine off. Mainly, because if I do, I doesn't want to
boot up afterwards. I usually have to wait an hour or two.
It's old, paid premium price for it - being the state of the art P3 600Mhz.

Getting a new state of the art - Kentsfield - Rd600/r600 (xfire) -
Ohh! -- What an upgrade difference. 3 months and counting down - the
way I see it.

Years. I never shut down, unless there's a power failure.

I keep it on all the time. Been running for the past 3.5 years (except when I have to move to a new location, then it's off for a day or so).

I usually restart the computer every week or two. Either because of an update that requires a reboot or just to clear the memory to make things run smoother.

They never get shutdown unless I'm upgrading or doing something to the hardware. I'll give it the occasional reboot but that's usually only because I've updated windows or trying out new/different drivers. Right now, my main machine has been running for well over 6 months without a complete shutdown and only 1 reboot that I can think of, and my HTPC was shutdown the other day, but that was only because of a power outage.

my emac has been on for a couple months straight, and my macbook has been on for about a week, since i had to update the firmware and a couple other things so i had to restart. thats one of the reasons i like mac's almost never need to shut 'em down!

My PC runs pretty much 24/7, except when my mobo's little 'power issue' manifests itself about once every 2 months or so...

Hey, its better than the dozens who ask for opinions about their proposed build constantly. That gets old sooo fast. I come to TGF looking for some interesting new piece of information or to help somebody out, and i get dozens of people asking "should I buy this? or "should I buy that?"

Edit: oh, and I keep my station on constantly, yes. The last time it was down for more than a day was when I was rebuilding it...though now you can hardly say its the same computer :-p.

been running for almost a month had to turn off to add a hd my electric bill is above normal hehe

17h a day, only off when I'm over at school (If I remember to turn it off).

On my old socket a machine I have I had it running no log offs no restarts and no shutdowns it ran 9months 3 day and 16 hours before my power supply blew up i'll try again some day to keep a computer on for a year straight no restarts and no shutdowns.

if im not using it, its not on.

learned that from my mom," if no one is in the room turn off the light ".

try it some time, it saves ya money too, for other things ya need like food and water, well at least for those like me who have their own home, and dont still live with MOMMY!

i got my pc 3 years ago and have only restarted when upgrading the software i heavent ever actually turned it off

Once a month, happens on tuesdays for some reason... (ok, or when I install a new program that require a reboot.) Other then that, I have it downloading things while I'm at work or asleep. (it spends about 16hrs downloading things.) For the record, this is a windows 2000 machine.

As for power, in the summer time when I leave my 3 computers on (all three get left on all the time) and run the AC, my power bill is (on average) about $60. It goes up in the winter time due to gas being so expensive. I live in a 2bed apt. $60 for cool air and lots of new things to watc.. I mean things downloaded isn't much in my opinion.

I almost never shut mine off, and never reboot... dont have to

admin@linuxbox ~ $ uptime
02:58:02 up 124 days, 14:36, 2 users, load average: 0.44, 0.31, 0.34

heh, gotta love linux

hmmmmm
very old pentium 200 mhz been on 18 hrs a day for the past 15 years

not-as-old pentium 4 used to b on 24/7 as it took ages to startup/shutdown and the psu has problems so it takes 40 minutes of coaxing to get it to work, cud restart thought but thatw as it. only time it went offline was when the mobo temps hit 70C

new core2 pc is on abt 98% of the year D

yay!
seeing as i run the pcs' full load 24/7 doing stuff and i hav a lot of peripherals connected

so 150W + 430W + 750W + 700W (for extras) = 2030W!!!
lol
bills wen tup abt 120 bux

I never turn my computer off, it's always on because it's always doing something, almost always folding at home as well.

power's dirt cheap here, 6c a KW/H, and it's all from a hydroelectric dam. The only time my computer is off, or not fully on, is when I have a power outage (and even then, if it was a short one my UPS would let it keep running, until the UPS's board fried) or when I had to restart for some reason/putting something in, like a fan or something.

I think you beat me. This machine, a P3-600 BX, when running W2K and on a UPS in 2003, being used as an FTP server and file server, ran 287 days with no restarts or shutdowns, then it crashed due to memory failure. I find that with XP it's just not possible to keep a system running that long, particularly due to all the bleeding updates necessary to maintain security.

Good topic!

Keep in mind that is MAX output. Just because you have a 700W powersupply doesn't mean your pulling 700W from the wall. If your video card is in 2d mode, and your cpu is not at 100%, theres a good chance you are really only using 150-200W.

Yes, when your PSU says 700W is the max that can support, is not you are using the 700W at all.

Edit: guys, that sick, never shut down your computers!!, more and more people dont shut down their Pcs, motherboard manufacters need to make sometime that you can select which activities you want to use, like "downloading Mode" or something like that, so only Lan and HD is the necesary to use, so less power to use.!

Keep in mind that is MAX output. Just because you have a 700W powersupply doesn't mean your pulling 700W from the wall. If your video card is in 2d mode, and your cpu is not at 100%, theres a good chance you are really only using 150-200W.