Leave Power On After Shutdown ?

[nr]

I'm wondering if there is any benefit to not turning the power strip
off after my PC has shut down. I use the strip to turn the monitor
on/off. Does the PC maintain any information if the power connection
is maintained? After getting my new monitor I kept the strip on and I
think the PC booted faster (not sure, though).

Just curious to see what other folks think.

 

[Pop`]

I'm wondering if there is any benefit to not turning the power strip
off after my PC has shut down.

Maybe, maybe not; there are a lot of opinions both ways. About the only
tangible aspect is you'll save some electricity.

I use the strip to turn the monitor

on/off. Does the PC maintain any information if the power connection
is maintained?

No. Once the computer has shut down there is no difference in whether the
power to it is on or off. Computers don't actually turn OFF most of the
time these days. They maintain a minimal functionality so that they can be
started by LAN activity, etc.; just a few of the more mundane things,
nothing of any consequence unless you want the modem to start the computer
to answer an incoming phone call, things like that.
But, computer power off is the same as power strip off with the
exceptions mentioned above. Not all systems have the same capabilities.

After getting my new monitor I kept the strip on and I

think the PC booted faster (not sure, though).

It probably did seem that way. Since the monitor still had power to it, the
filaments in the crt were kept "warm" and the display came on a little
sooner. The computer itself though won't be any different.

Just curious to see what other folks think.

What I do:
I have imaging software scheduled to run every night. On days I've done a
lot of work on the machine, I leave it on overnight. If not much happened
that day and I'm not concerned about the incremental backups, I go ahead and
shut it down, including the power bar. If I happen to be in the middle of
something and backing it up isn't important, then I use the Hibernate
feature so I get started faster when I come back to it.

HTH
Pop`

 

[Lem]

I'm wondering if there is any benefit to not turning the power strip
off after my PC has shut down. I use the strip to turn the monitor
on/off. Does the PC maintain any information if the power connection
is maintained? After getting my new monitor I kept the strip on and I
think the PC booted faster (not sure, though).

Just curious to see what other folks think.

"shut down" can mean several different things. If you are interested in
the maximum possible power saving, then turning off your power strip
guarantees that no power at all will reach either your computer or your
monitor (or anything else plugged into the strip).

Sometimes, however, you might want the computer to "wake up" on its own.
You might want to schedule a backup, disk defrag, virus scan, or other
time consuming task for the middle of the night when it won't interfere
with your working on the computer. Or, if you are using Windows XP Fax
Services with an internal fax modem, you might want the modem to be able
to detect an incoming fax call, wake up the computer, and receive the
fax. Many fax modems have this capability, but there needs to be power
supplied to the computer (i.e., the strip has to be left on) for this
function to work. Similarly, some, but not all, computers can be
configured so that they "wake up" on receiving a so-called "magic
packet" over their network interface card. Again, in order for this
feature to work, there must be poser connected to the computer power supply.

 

[Jonny]

If you mean select turn off the computer, then select turn off; except for
bios potential responses to external cues, no.
The PC is no longer in an XP environment under the conditions noted above.
Nothing is active. All hardware is not powered including RAM.
If the power is available, power is available to the motherboard. Your
motherboard may have an onboard LED indicating same. This power enables the
PC to turn on from a cue from the bios.