What do you with your computer when your away?

I just let my MacBook go to sleep or whatever it does when I close the lid. If I leave the house (besides for work) it usually comes with me and stays asleep.

I just turn it off.

Laptop on sleep mode all day, every day! Pretty sure it's not good for it, but hey, it's easier.

I turn it off, I sleep in the same room as my computer and it's way too loud to keep running, it's a huge workstation.

But I just let sleeping laptops lie.

If I turn my computer on, it's probably not going to be turned off until I'm about to get in bed. Even if I'm not using it, it gets turned on in the morning usually.

I've been putting it in Sleepytime Mode more often now that it's getting warm outside. All winter, I left that sucker on and it kept my room nice and toasty.

Sometimes I leave it on and other times I turn them off. It depends really.

If its during the day I just turn the monitor off and come back to it later. If its during the night I'll turn it off every now and then depending on how long I've had it running during the week.

On laptops, I close the cover which often is suspend/sleep. On desktops I usually shutdown.

I'd turn it off, but then when I come back I'd have to turn it on again. So why bother? Speaking of which, how long could one keep a PC running without turning it off? I've heard of tales that tell for years but I'm by no means an expert.

Usually doesn't get turned off until I go to bed. So whenever I'm not using it I just put it into sleep mode.

Off.

Turn it off, unless I was in hurry and forgot to do it before going out.

If I'm going out or going to sleep I will turn it off. If I just go out for half an hour or am doing other stuff in the house I keep it turned on.

How far away, and for how long? If I'm gone for a few hours, I put the laptop to sleep. Over night, I would turn it off. Gone for a week, I turn it off and pull out the battery if it is a laptop. I don't trust lithium batteries sitting in my apartment unattended for long.

Turn it off like a sane person.

Shut it down

I've heard turning it off and on again constantly can do some wear and tear on it, so I'm averse to doing such. A good "sleep" for it is good for me, although it has a tendency to turn itself back on in the middle of night. So if anyone has an idea why...that'd be....swell.

I simply turn it off as electricity as gone up in price.

If I'm going out for a few minutes/hours or going to sleep, it gets put in sleep mode. Usually do a full shut down at the end of every month just to flush out all the crap built up on it over the last 30 days.

If I'm going on a vacation where I'll be away from it for a couple of days, it gets shut down completely until I come back.

if I'm going to be gone for more than an hour, turn off. If under, sleep.

Anyone who doesn't turn it off disgusts me.

not as much as my dad who just turns off the power strip for his computer but still.

lappy goes to sleep. I turn off my desktop though because that thing sounds like a jet and is kinda power-hungry.

Lights out, motherfucker!

Unless I am cleaning it, this computer is on 24/7. I am usually awake for about 20 or 21 of those hours though so it is actually in use for the majority of that time.

Turn it off when I'm going to bed or leaving for a long period, put it to sleep if I'm only leaving for a couple hours and leave it on if I'm downloading something or only leaving the house for a few minutes. Sometimes I also fall asleep with it on.

If I've got important stuff it sleeps, if not shutdown.

My macbook i leave on all the time, just close it when i'm not using it. My gaming laptop on the other hand i turn off whenever i'm not using it, mostly because i don't have much trust in it's vitality.

I usually hibernate it, because it uses less power than sleep, and waking it from an ssd is pretty much instant, but I have been rethinking that lately. I think I am going to start just turning the thing off, that way I won't wear out my ssd any faster from it writing and reading 16GB to and from memory everytime I want to read a stupid Wikipedia page.

My laptop and PC are never turned off, always on sleep mode. I pretty much never restart this thing. They improved sleep mode a lot with Vista or Windows 7, it was almost instant even without an SSD.

Damn those people folding for good causes, or just leaving their computer on for convenience, what disgusting specimens.

With the right OS and assuming there are no hardware failures, keeping a PC on for years is not a problem. With Windows you normally have to restart it every so often just because of memory problems after having it on for so long, but with Linux people have had them running for years without problems, and servers stay up for years at a time. Also when you turn a PC on and off it is heating up and cooling down, making it expand and contract which can make some of the very small connections in the components fail, which is why it is sometimes better to let it keep running.

I had a 10 year old PC that rarely ever got turned off for long periods of time, only turned it off for updates and installs, and i think i cleaned it only once so it was covered in dust. The only problem i ever had with it was the hard drive failed twice, which is to be expected when you have it running so much. The only reason it is still not running is last year was when the second hard drive failed, and rather then fix and keep using a 10 year old PC it was time for an upgrade. But with my new PC i turn it off when not in use and clean out the dust more regularly.

I put it to sleep most of the time, but turn it all the way off a few times per week, since it ain't good for it to never shut all the way down. Don't be silly, people. Let it be all the way unconscious once in a damned while.

I turn my PC off but my laptop just goes into sleep mode when I shut the lid but it never resumes properly so I end up restarting when I go to use it again.

With my old computer, I'd put it in the corner and hope it would learn its lesson. Clearly, that didn't work, so this time, sleep mode.

When my away does what??

hump it.

What about my away?

Also, nothing. It's literally never off.

if its sleep or im leaving the house for more than 5 hours, then yes i'll turn it off.

if im just going out to dinner/movie or errands ill usually leave it on.

The power usage when in sleep mode is quite negligible. You are not saving the earth by turning your computer off.

I don't have an away.

I know my computer usually switches back on if it prompted for a restart to install an automatic update and I tell it to sleep. Could be the mouse telling it to wake up too possibly.

I leave it on. I will restart it every so often though for system updates and the like but computers are machines that are designed to stay on and running. I really see no reason to not always leave it running.

Usually I just leave mine on, although it depends on where I am. I run a gaming laptop (Asus G74sx), and when I'm at home it rarely gets turned off, although I have a homemade cooling fan on top of the keyboard and sheet of HEPA filter paper surrounding the whole thing (my apartment is quite dusty). Since it's hooked up to a wireless keyboard as well as my TV via HDMI, this isn't an issue. When I'm away, however it usually gets turned off when I leave my hotel/camp room for work. I don't trust the people that work in some of those camps at all, so I usually lock it up. Plus some of the camps that are really close to site (I work in the Alberta oil sands), the rooms get really dusty with a very fine dirt that is just murder on electronic components.

I tend to just put it on sleep. I find shutting down and powering up on my desktop to be too much of a hassle (might have to do a clean install of Win 7 again). It keeps the power bill low, and in a small way makes me feel a little better about my power usage.

Seriously. I actually used a tool called Killawatt once to measure how much power my desktop was pulling during heavy load and during sleep. I don't remember actual numbers, but the number during sleep was extremely low. You probably use more leaving a light on.

As for me, I close my laptop whenever it isn't in use. The desktop gets put to sleep and gets shutdown/restarted about once a week, otherwise you start to notice things running a little slower.

Pretty stoked to see that most people are turning their gear off when away, nice one GiantBomb!

sleep/hibernation is my honest answer. barely any power use and i can get it up and running in about 5 seconds (core2duo for 2007 w/ mechanical hard disks)

and only at giantbomb would people be "disgusted" about absolutely negligible things.

(i do agree with at least putting it in sleep mode, but to call it disgusting to leave it on is a bit much, y'know)

My computer's kind of special. A while ago, my family and I were spray painting our house, and I forgot to cover my computer, so everything got caked in sticky paint dust. When there's no air flowing, the dust settles all over the place, and it's really hard to clean off.

That said, I leave mine on all the time just to have air flowing. It's not good to have it off and let the environment chip away at it, and for those who are a little too worried about others' power consumption habits, I always close all programs that don't need to be on to keep the computer humming.

Plus, I like a little noise when I sleep; I can't do it in dead silence.

paying for my own electricity taught me to turn off my gaming pc overnite

only takes 10 seconds to boot so its not a problem

I it off.