Power Down Options...

[Drafter1981]

I have a general computer or – IT – “Best Practices” question….

When powering down, is it better to completely shut down all applications and shut the computer/laptop off, or… is it better to just simply leave the applications on and put the computer/laptop into sleep mode? What are the pros & cons? I’m very interested since, this somehow has become a hot topic in our office

In the past, I’ve always shut my computer/laptop down and locked it up for the evening. Basically, unless I had overtime, I really did not touch my office machine. The same with my home/personal devices. I just shut everything down. Lately (since COVID), I’ve been told to leave my computer/laptop on or to put into sleep mode, and to also leave any active programs on. I’m not sure why I’m being asked to do this other than the issues I’ve discussed in the past, about not being able to connect to servers or software licenses on a regular basis.

As I stated earlier, “what is the best practice” when it come to this situation with our computer or laptops. Again, I’m just curious to see what people think, or know when it comes to our devices.

[RobDraw]

I always shut down unless I need to leave my workstation on for connecting remotely.  Turning off applications and rebooting clears temporary caches, allows updates to finish (depending on your settings), etc. With that said, if your work computer is supplied by your employer, it's best to do what they ask.

[pendean]

>>>... I’m not sure why I’m being asked to do this...<<<
Ask them why.

[Mistress0fTheDorkness]

One of my employers had us leave ours powered on. We were asked to reboot at the end of the day, though, to leave it on overnight, but not necessarily with programs running. 

I assumed for system updates, scripts to query software and hardware actively in use, which may have been missed in an upgrade, backups like code42/crashplan, antivirus software, etc stuff that may be set to run at night so it doesn't slow people down during the day. 

And for me, I recently had to ask some users to leave their systems on overnight, but it was because their cloud storage was really huge and needed time to sync. They kept wanting to open up their drive and just immediately have access to their files, and then complain about everything slowing down when they were busy... but it takes a lot of time to sync that many files with that many people updating them on a deadline.