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- Path: sparky!uunet!news.centerline.com!jimf
- From: jimf@centerline.com (Jim Frost)
- Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
- Subject: Re: Superstitions: power cycling, screen savers, surge suppressors
- Date: 23 Nov 1992 21:51:15 GMT
- Organization: CenterLine Software, Inc.
- Lines: 55
- Message-ID: <1erjojINN76l@armory.centerline.com>
- References: <By3EGq.Ko6@world.std.com>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: 140.239.3.202
-
- dpbsmith@world.std.com (Daniel P. B. Smith) writes:
- >These are LIVE superstitions, as will shortly be demonstrated as I
- >get buried by flames.
-
- >I have been trying since the seventies to find ANYONE who has actual
- >DATA on the question of whether it is better to turn computers off when
- >not in use or to leave them on. EVERYONE has an OPINION. NOBODY seems
- >to have any DATA.
-
- Just ask the manufacturer of a disk drive what the MTBF is in terms of
- continual operation as well as number of spinup cycles -- they
- probably have that data. Their data will probably show that power
- cycling it once a day will not significantly affect anything.
-
- My opinion is that turning them off makes it possible that they won't
- turn on again. This opinion has been backed up by the failure of a
- number of drives -- notably the early Quantum Prodrives -- to bother
- spinning up again. It only takes a couple of those before you're not
- keen on shutting the suckers down. (It's disconcerting to have to
- smack a disk to get it to spin. :-)
-
- >I also believe that the risk of leaving a computer powered-on and UNATTENDED
- >more than balances the risk of cycling it.
-
- Maybe. Personally I feel the inconvenience of waiting for the thing
- to do its power-on-self-test more than balances the risk of leaving it
- on.
-
- >Screen-savers. A very clever way of providing a market for display hacks.
- >And a very useful justification for people who just enjoy having neat
- >stuff on their screen. No doubt screen-savers actually ARE needed on some
- >CRT's, particular the older point-plotting and stroke-tracing models in
- >which all of the beam current was going into a tiny area. But what about
- >stock CRT's in normal use on PC's and Macintoshes? If they're really
- >NECESSARY why aren't they designed into the hardware? I've seen a classic
- >(1984, monochrome) Mac that was essentially left on 24 hours a day for years,
- >and the menu bar had darkened just a bit -- but it didn't matter when the
- >menu bar was being DISPLAYED in normal use.
-
- Try it on a color monitor. Burn-in isn't that bad on mono displays
- unless they have really high brightness and contrast (like the
- original Pong machines) but I've seen sony trinitrons burned in with
- the HP graphical logon logo -- on an HP 9000/710.
-
- Just making the screen black works for me.
-
- >Personally, I don't futz with screen savers because I hate adding yet another
- >layer of TSR-like software into my system.
-
- Ah, you must use MS-DOS. I never bothered with 'em on those systems
- either because they tended to crash quite regularly when I was using
- them. I had the Midas Touch I guess.
-
- jim frost
- jimf@centerline.com
-