# 41 days



## JJR512 (May 18, 2010)

41 days, 0 hours, 34 minutes.

That's how long my Apple MacBook Pro has been running, that's how long it's been since I turned it on. But now it's time to restart it. Why? Because of an update to Safari that requires a restart. I've been lucky, there have been some other updates during that time but none that required a restart.

Can I make make it as long before the next mandatory restart due to a system update? We'll see!


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## Peak and Pine (Sep 12, 2007)

*41 Days*

And there you had me thinking you'd put a time limit on your hunt for work.


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## TheGreatTwizz (Oct 27, 2010)

^^^^ ME TOO!!!

About a dozen years ago, I had a friend with a Linux box that was up for 421 days. Even survived a power outage due to his APC unit (and monitor off). Reason for restart: upgrade the video card.

Gotta love macs for that stuff. My PCs can barely make it 41 hours.


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## JJR512 (May 18, 2010)

Peak and Pine said:


> *41 Days*
> 
> And there you had me thinking you'd put a time limit on your hunt for work.


There is no time limit on that. What if I set a time limit and I don't get a job by then, what am I supposed to do then-"Well, I didn't make my goal of finding a job within 41 days. Now it's time for Plan B: Give up on the whole job thing and just be a homeless bum for the rest of my life!"



TheGreatTwizz said:


> ^^^^ ME TOO!!!
> 
> About a dozen years ago, I had a friend with a Linux box that was up for 421 days. Even survived a power outage due to his APC unit (and monitor off). Reason for restart: upgrade the video card.
> 
> Gotta love macs for that stuff. My PCs can barely make it 41 hours.


I guess if I didn't do any mandatory-restart updates, it might make it that long. But I like keeping things updated.


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## Peak and Pine (Sep 12, 2007)

JJR512 said:


> There is no time limit on that.


Well there damn well oughta be. A lot of us here put a lot of keyboard sweat into job counseling you (tho I deleted mine when you failed to respond with even so much as a shove it) and we're expecting you to feed back with a daily progress report. Get it, _daily_?


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## ZachGranstrom (Mar 11, 2010)

JJR512 said:


> 41 days, 0 hours, 34 minutes.


That's nothing! Sometimes I can go months and months without shutting down or restarting my computer. (Winner!)


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## Howard (Dec 7, 2004)

But why keep it on for so long,Wouldn't it use up the battery?


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## Apatheticviews (Mar 21, 2010)

Howard said:


> But why keep it on for so long,Wouldn't it use up the battery?


A lot of ours aren't laptops.

There's no reason to shut them down.

When I became a Unix administrator back in 2000, one of the interesting things they had mentioned was that several banking computers hadn't been shut down for decades.


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## MikeDT (Aug 22, 2009)

23:28 up 23 days, 1:49, 2 users, load averages: 3.07 3.06 2.75

Looks like I've got some more days to go with this MacBook Pro. It would have been 60+ days, but I had to disassemble it to clean the fans out.


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## Cruiser (Jul 21, 2006)

I almost never turn my computers off, home or office. I keep my home laptop plugged in and running 24/7 and can't recall turning it off or restarting it even once since the new year began. 

Having said that, every now and then I get a message saying that my computer automatically updated something during the night while I was asleep and that the update required a restart, which it did automatically. Do Macs not do that?

Cruiser


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## JJR512 (May 18, 2010)

Howard said:


> But why keep it on for so long,Wouldn't it use up the battery?


It is a laptop but that doesn't mean I'm always using the battery. Most of the time I'm at home and using AC power. Sometimes I'm out and I do use the battery but rarely all of it. Even if I drain it to the point where the OS thinks the battery is about to die, the OS will forcibly put the computer in a hibernation state, which does not actually turn it off and does not reset the uptime counter.



Cruiser said:


> I almost never turn my computers off, home or office. I keep my home laptop plugged in and running 24/7 and can't recall turning it off or restarting it even once since the new year began.
> 
> Having said that, every now and then I get a message saying that my computer automatically updated something during the night while I was asleep and that the update required a restart, which it did automatically. Do Macs not do that?
> 
> Cruiser


Macs, by default (in my experience) do not automatically install updates by themselves. The OS checks for updates periodically and if one is available, a message window appears to notify the user about it. If the user isn't actually at the computer, that notice will just sit there and wait patiently.

The notification message says there is an update available, and it says whether or not it requires a restart. Most Mac updates do not require a restart. It gives you the option of doing it now, or doing it later.

As with Windows, a Mac user always has the option of manually initiating a check for updates.

Windows users who do not like or want Windows to automatically install updates and restart the computer on its own can turn that feature off.


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## Howard (Dec 7, 2004)

So you can keep it on for as long as you want and it wouldn't ruin the hard drive.


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## Howard (Dec 7, 2004)

I always keep my computer off after usage but on my days off I can be on my computer for about 14,15 hours from the time I wake up after 530am to about after 8pm at night.


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## Peak and Pine (Sep 12, 2007)

So maybe you and Justin should form a brotherhood or something.


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## jackmccullough (May 10, 2006)

Small question: why?

Is it just to see how long you can go, like people who try to see how long they can go without changing their underwear?

Back in the 80's I remember that some people said it was better to leave your computer running (something to do with the read/write heads maybe?), but it's been a long time since I've heard anyone suggest that your computer is better off if you never turn it off.

I can sort of see the novelty of it, and even the slight inconvenience of waiting for it to boot up, but it seems kind of like leaving your lights turned on so they'll be ready when you need them.


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## ZachGranstrom (Mar 11, 2010)

jackmccullough said:


> Small question: why?


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## Peak and Pine (Sep 12, 2007)

Glad to see that the caustic, tough-love post by someone near the top of this has done nothing to sway you all from from actually talking about computer run times rather than the subtext of what this should really be about.


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## Cruiser (Jul 21, 2006)

jackmccullough said:


> Small question: why?
> 
> Is it just to see how long you can go, like people who try to see how long they can go without changing their underwear?
> 
> Back in the 80's I remember that some people said it was better to leave your computer running (something to do with the read/write heads maybe?), but it's been a long time since I've heard anyone suggest that your computer is better off if you never turn it off.


At the time I retired from the U.S. Government in 2005 we were under instructions from our IT folks to leave our computers running all the time and to just log off at the end of the workday. It was suggested that we re-boot them about once a week.

Cruiser


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## Howard (Dec 7, 2004)

Peak and Pine said:


> So maybe you and Justin should form a brotherhood or something.


Brotherhood of Computers?


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## MikeDT (Aug 22, 2009)

Howard said:


> Brotherhood of Computers?


A euphemism for a botnet?


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## JJR512 (May 18, 2010)

Howard said:


> So you can keep it on for as long as you want and it wouldn't ruin the hard drive.


Correct. When it goes to sleep, that includes the hard drive. There are different power management settings, one set for running on AC power and another, more aggressive set for running on battery power.



jackmccullough said:


> Small question: why?
> 
> Is it just to see how long you can go, like people who try to see how long they can go without changing their underwear?


No. This is nothing about trying to see how long it can go. Macintoshes turn on pretty quick, but even so, it's quicker to wake one up from sleep than to turn it on. And there are frequently times when I need it ready to use in a hurry. So it's more about convenience than anything else to just leave it on and wake it up when I need it, rather than turning it off and back on when I need it.



> Back in the 80's I remember that some people said it was better to leave your computer running (something to do with the read/write heads maybe?), but it's been a long time since I've heard anyone suggest that your computer is better off if you never turn it off.


I'm not suggesting that it's better for a computer to never turn it off, and I don't recall anyone else suggesting that, either. And I would tend to disagree with this. Especially if I had a Windows computer, at least XP (can't say much about Vista or 7 since I have little to no experience with these newer versions), which after a few days starts to get noticeably sluggish, which is cleared up by restarting. Macintoshes are far better in that regard, but perhaps it's from years of experience with Windows that I kind of suspect they should really be restarted periodically, too.



> I can sort of see the novelty of it, and even the slight inconvenience of waiting for it to boot up, but it seems kind of like leaving your lights turned on so they'll be ready when you need them.


These two things do not compare.

It's roughly 20-30 seconds (been awhile since I timed it) to cold start my computer and have it get to a point that it's ready to use. It's roughly 5 seconds to press a button on the keyboard of the sleeping computer to get the password prompt to unlock it, type in the password, and have it be ready to use. In the grand scheme of life, sure, cold starting is a "slight inconvenience" compared to waking it up. But it's not like leaving lights on at all. First of all, turning on the lights takes less than a second, so the time saved in leaving them on is extremely minimal, even compared to the time saved waking up the computer instead of cold starting it. Secondly, leaving lights on uses the same amount of electricity whether you're in the room or not. Putting the computer to sleep causes it to use far, far less electricity than it does when it's awake. Yes, a sleeping computer does use a very slight amount of power, and obviously when it's off, it uses none. But it's not like leaving the lights on because the sleeping computer uses hardly any power compared to the left-on lights using full power.


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## JJR512 (May 18, 2010)

Peak and Pine said:


> Glad to see that the caustic, tough-love post by someone near the top of this has done nothing to sway you all from from actually talking about computer run times rather than the subtext of what this should really be about.


I have a very hard time seeing subtext. As far as what I've been talking about, there is no subtext. This is just a simple thread about a simple topic and as far as I'm concerned, no subtext is needed here.


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## JerseyJohn (Oct 26, 2007)

I leave my Windows XP desktop machine on all the time. The only time I restart it is if I lose power (only my router, modem and network drive are on the UPS to keep my laptop connected), or occasionally - once every few months - when I run my registry cleaner (registry changes require a restart to reload the new version). I guess Windows updates may require a restart sometimes - maybe this happens automatically at night - I don't keep track. I don't recall any degrading of performance or improvement with a restart. My temp files are all wiped nightly and my disk drive slack space is secure-erased every week by automated software, so maybe that helps.


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## JJR512 (May 18, 2010)

It's not really disk space or temp files that are the problem with Windows, it's programs that get loaded into memory and the exited, but they don't always properly release the resources they use (bits of memory, OS-level notification tasks, etc.) back to Windows so Windows can re-use them for itself or other programs.


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## Howard (Dec 7, 2004)

MikeDT said:


> A euphemism for a botnet?


A euphemism for a what?


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## Howard (Dec 7, 2004)

> Correct. When it goes to sleep, that includes the hard drive. There are different power management settings, one set for running on AC power and another, more aggressive set for running on battery power.


I tried to keep mine on Sleep mode and the screen came back when I got home.


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