This question has been around for years with varying camps leaning to one side or the other. Should you leave it on, or should you turn it off every time you’re done using it? Well, I suppose it would depend upon the situation. For example, if you use your desktop quite a bit, multiple times throughout the day, then it simply wouldn’t make sense to shut it completely down, spinning your Hard Drive up and down continuously, increasing the risk of Hard Drive issues. If, on the other hand, you rarely use your desktop, or perhaps use it once a day, then sure, by all means, turn it off. No sense in wasting power and creating extra heat in your house (especially during these sweltering summer months).

Moving onto the next topic…many of you may wonder as to whether or not you should leave your laptop plugged in all the time. As a matter of fact, I’ve see this sort of thing all the time. My answer would be, sure, you can leave your laptop plugged in all the time, if you don’t care about your battery life. If you’re going to plug it in, take your battery out, unless of course you’re charging it, in which case, do not do anything with the machine while you’re charging it, it just wears the battery down. If you leave your battery in your notebook while you have it plugged in, AND you’re working on it, well, that just eats your battery like cookies. Another suggestion when it comes to this is that you run your battery all the way down before recharging. This will also help preserve the battery for longer life down the road.

This has been another helpful tech tip from your Tech Fellows.