Dear JAA – Computer life?
Posted in Dear JAA on August 25th, 2009 by ab[My friend] and I were chatting about our computers last night and were complaining how a computer has a shelf life of roughly 3-5 years. This is annoying. Obviously there’s nothing we can about technological advances making our computers outdated eventually, thus requiring us to buy a new one.
However what can we do to treat our computers nicer to prevent mechanical breakdowns that necessitate new purchases?
One debate we had was this: is it better for your computer to leave it on, but in sleep mode turning it off only at day’s end? or is it better to turn it off every time you’re not using it? We felt that frequent switches on and off would be worse, but other people–who shall remain nameless–argues that simply shutting the laptop screen while it’s still on is bad for the computer.
Can you clear up this debate and offer other tips to increase a laptop’s lifespan?
I assume that you don’t care about my theories on computer hardware responding to karmic interference… so let’s keep to the facts. There are plenty of arguments out on the web for keeping a computer on or not, but I think it’s a pretty simple discussion: