If you don't shut down your Mac...

[kps]

CODE

Last login: Sat Jun 21 11:18:26 on ttyp1
Welcome to KARCOM!
The Terminal is your friend!
[KARCOM:~] karl% uptime
11:25AM  up 17 days,  9:21, 2 users, load averages: 1.58, 0.82, 0.53
[KARCOM:~] karl%

Seventeen days, nine hours, twenty one minutes and counting...without a reboot. I know that's not much compared to some servers and other machines, but this could never work in OS 9.

Gotta love the stability of this OS... so what's your uptime?

I'm going to install some software that needs a reboot, so the uptime will reset, but still...

[JohnKentucky]

Course no matter what, mine will get reset come the release of 10.3

uptime
11:49AM  up 6 days, 15:04, 2 users, load averages: 1.63, 0.99, 0.88

[kelly]

Fine if you're into that sort of thing.

i shut mine down often.

I've found also that even OS X will do better after a Reboot.

[Bruce_F]

Maybe it's an "old school" thing, but I still restart my computer whenever I notice a change in it's bebavior. Rebooting in OSX is so fast that it hardly seems a nuisance.

In my book, besides the behavioral thing, a restart is in order whenever I run utilities or install software.

[kps]

It's not necessarily "old school" thinking, but I find that I prefer to put my computer to sleep as opposed to shutting it down.

Software installs that require a restart or troubleshooting restarts, one can't avoid, but my G4 machine and OS X are so rock solid I have no problems just letting it "do its thing".  

[jcarter]

I always shut my Macs down at night.  What would happen if something decided to malfunction or heat up?
Maybe its not really necessary to shut 'em down, but they always start up fresh in the morning.
I have a friend who has an old Mac hooked up to a telescope and it has been on for 4 years!  Except for a couple of power failures and thunderstorms.
 

[Gary S]

kps,
I shut mine down too at the end of the....well day, night, period?

I bought Jaguar Cache Cleaner as you suggested a while back when i was having some problemos and now i run the Maintainence scripts once a week. I heard the OS does it automatically during the night. i don't know what it does but i'm running problem free right now.

 

[Paddy]

kps - 20 days and counting. Cool - didn't know I could see that in the Terminal (much of the Terminal remains a dark mystery to me, simply because of lack of time!!).

I never bother shutting down - the last time I did it was because I was installing something. I literally cannot remember the last time I had a crash or freeze - but I honestly don't think that there has been a single one since I started using Jaguar. Pretty impressive!  

I have noticed periodic slow-downs, but usually only when I have some 25 programs running and who knows how many windows open...closing windows and shutting down apps usually takes care of that. My computer gets much like my physical desktop sometimes - REALLY messy!!!

[kps]

Gary, the maintenance scripts run only when the computer is in full ON mode, if it's "sleeping" the scripts wont run. My 'puter is usually on at 9:30AM no matter what day, so I changed the crontab file to run all maintenance scripts at this time. It runs in the background and there's no slowing down of the system.

My crontab file from /etc/crontab:

CODE

# /etc/crontab
SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/etc:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin
HOME=/var/log
#
#minute hour    mday    month   wday    who     command
#
#*/5    *       *       *       *       root    /usr/libexec/atrun
#
# Run daily/weekly/monthly jobs.
30      9       *       *       *       root    periodic daily
30      9       *       *       6       root    periodic weekly
30      9       1       *       *       root    periodic monthly
/etc/crontab (END)

If you or anyone else is interested, I'll post how to do this...but it requires you to run one of the CLI text editors (Pico, vi, emacs) in the terminal as root. I think there are GUI cron job editors, but I have never used them. If you have BBEdit 6.5 and up, you can use that through the CLI and run the app as root.

Paddy, that's great! The last time I had to reboot was for the Quicktime update and today I did the updated Security patch and had to reboot...otherwise the machine stays on/sleep.

[giantmike]

I like to leave OS X running at all times (sleep mode when not in use). I find it so much faster and easier to wake up from sleep than a restart every morning. Of course, with OS 9, it was a restart about every 3 hours

Current uptime: 15 days, 20 hours

Longest uptime on iBook: 41 days, 21 hours

Well over a month running with no problems, and that was with OS X 10.0.x  

BTW, the longest uptime is on my web page, I know of no way to get it from the computer.

[Buck]

I've heard that leaving the computer on all the time is better on the hard drive than starting up from a cold restart over & over. How true is this?    

[kps]

I truly believe it makes no difference in the overall life cycle of the machine.

I've read that it's better for the circuitry and processor if there isn't a sudden surge of power...but I used to shut down my previous Macs for years. Including a Centris 610 that still starts up and works, ten years later....and with the original PRAM battery.

With the stability of OS X, I prefer to put the machine to sleep.

[Spartacus]

I always shut down my Mac when I go to bed.

I don't like the idea that a thunder storm might fry my Mac. I know, I can (and probably should) protect my computer against this sort of things, but at the moment I haven't.

The longest uptime was probably around 24 or 30 hours. But I spent most of the time in front of my PM.  

[CyberPet]

Since Apple has a bad habit of releasing security updates and other things that require reboots my uptime right now is 7 days and 16 hours. When I was in Canada I think I came up to two weeks or something. I really don't bother about the uptime since I think the computer need a reboot now and then to release memory etc since not all software is well programmed.

[Paddy]

Spartacus, unless you unplug your Mac every night too, simply shutting it down won't help if you have a direct hit from lightning. ANYTHING plugged in is vulnerable. With a direct hit, rarely, but potentially, things that aren't plugged in can be damaged too - lightning strikes create a powerful electromagnetic field.  

Info on surge protection and how it works:

http://howstuffworks.lycoszone.com/surge-protector.htm

Info on grounding:

http://www.altair.org/emc.html

http://www.hsb.com/thelocomotive/Story/Ful...T-FS-light.html

http://www.citelprotection.com/citel/grounding.htm

I seem to recall that discussion of this topic came up a while ago and someone (Sandbox? Beacher?) had some interesting solutions for his entire house. Can't find it now though.