Power
Posted: Tue 22 February, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts, Weirdness 10 Comments »It’s hard to believe, but most people in this office leave their computers on (although ‘locked’ from unauthorised access) overnight here. Most of the time they leave work-in-progress open under the ‘locked’ screen, or programs open. I’m one of the few who prefers to power-down completely and thus keep data etc. saved and safe instead.
Last night the office had a power-cut for a while. It’s been panic today while people have tried to restore and/or recreate the work they’d been doing yesterday which they hadn’t saved. And of course because the files were open, they weren’t backed up on the nightly data back-up. So in short, they’re shafted.
I can’t deny, I do have a little feeling of smugness this morning. I bet it’s company policy by the end of the week that all PCs should be shut down properly at night…
Cue advice on why leaving PCs on is better for the hardware. I leave my work laptop on all the time when it’s in the office but I never ever EVER leave work open. It’s saved and checked back in where it should be.
I was once bitten hard by failing to do this and it’s part of the end of my day to square away stuff on my desk and my “desktop”.
But yeah, I’d be smug too 😉
I can’t find it right now, but Pete at Uborka said it far better than me about the pros and cons of power-down as opposed to leaving the PC on.
It’s a convenience thing for me — it takes about 10 minutes to boot up a PC here at Uni, once it’s done connecting to the network, applying whatever patches it requires, then loading my profile. And I usually have to leave my code running for a few days anyway.
But leaving documents open overnight is just silly. 😉
This isn’t so much of a shutting down issue as it is a saving your work issue. The merits of the former are debatable, the merits of the latter are not. Our machines stay on 24/7 anyway, and are backed up automatically at about 4am.
Very true, Chris. But it’s still been a learning experience for all those who’ve lost up to a week’s work (they also left the PCs on and docs open over the weekend).
Also, as a side point, it’s worth noting that they leave IE and MSN open overnight or all weekend too. Nice and secure…
doesnt windows end up with a memory hole if left open too long anyway? Lyle id be smug too.
A lot of people do that at my work too, I just don’t understand it. Well, I suppose I do – I have worked through the ‘save everything every 5 mins because it’s going to crash’ early 90’s. And they haven’t.
It’s always been the policy in my office to power-down machines at the end of the day – but that’s only because our old network manager used to have a little spyware program in the network login script, so that he could keep a record of when people logged in on a morning.
Lyle – is this the article that you had in mind?
Indeed it is, Pete. Thanks!