Question

[CanaBalistic]

its easier to appreciate what you have once you know where its from.

How true, Its also easier to understand the mechanics of it all. The first thing i learnt in my pc repair program was computer history. Old code breaking machines and the like.

Trivial Trivia:
Leonardo Davinci built the first analog computer. It was a self propeled and self steering cart.

[Nagoshi]

Oh yea now I remember, playing Warcraft 1 on my 486 computer was really fast. The water was running at like 100FPS But even with the turbo button off, it was still fast

[CanaBalistic]

I found a really cool thing in XP a few min ago. You can use the hibernate function to skip startup and make your comp ready to go in seconds.

I set it so when i press the power button it goes into hibernate and shuts down in 10 sec. When i press the power button again it'll skip a bunch of stuff and turn back on with all my programs still running.

Im going to use this if and when i make a HTPC...

[tybrenis]

I found a really cool thing in XP a few min ago. You can use the hibernate function to skip startup and make your comp ready to go in seconds.

I set it so when i press the power button it goes into hibernate and shuts down in 10 sec. When i press the power button again it'll skip a bunch of stuff and turn back on with all my programs still running.

Im going to use this if and when i make a HTPC...

Yeah, hibernate is a good feature, but still is quite different from actually turning off your PC... my only reason if I ever turn off mine is for heat issues in my room, but with AC... well, you know.

[Nagoshi]

Yea hmm well hibernating does what it means.

Briefly shown, it won't ''empty'' your cache and RAM as if you would shut it off. It will keep all your components ''filled''. If you want an exemple, try playing a really demanding game for many hours, leave your computer on and do as many things as you can do. After, like, 1 or 2days you will notice its getting slow. Thats why I recommend shutdown instead of hibernate.

For example, let's say a big cute bear has dirt on his fur. He goes into his den so he can hibernate for winter. Then when springs come he gets out. He'll still have some dirt on his fur. Well you could compare the fur with your components, like your computer cache, RAM, and video card RAM, and the dirt could be the useless datas that will remain there.

The bunch of things he skips are actually many things a computer needs to do when launching. And imagine, you ''shut down'' your computer with the power button without thinking about if your OS is really shutted down or no. Doing so, he enters Hibernation. You grab your case and change the video card. You launch it back. Now it enters the already ''loaded'' OS which will be pretty screwed up now. Since he'll still be thinking all your softwares and drivers are already loaded, he'll be screwed up when he will detect a new video card.

Youd better shut it down, it will prevent some problems if you just put it into hibernate.

[silverdemon]

if you change parts you should always shut down!

in hibernation mode, the RAM is copied to the harddrive, when you 'restart' it'll load the image on the HDD to your RAM again, so the thing about the 'useless data' is true. Because that will also be loaded again.

I run my laptop without any problems for a week or so, I suggest that you turn off your computer every once in a while, like nagoshi said. But for one week it will be fine...

[cheztir]

Take advice from a Mac person as well, i can "sleep" my system for about 3 weeks before i notice too much of a slow down. hen you must reboot, but normally by then there is a software update. Also, i've changed hardware while my Mac was asleep, it freaked out when it woke up. (Went from 3 monitors down to one). PC's are the exact same, the occasional reboot or shutdown is not a bad thing.

[Nagoshi]

reboot will not ''clear'' everything as if you wuold shutdown it. When I reboot my computer because its getting slow, it gets a bit more faster, but the cache does not have the time to empty fully. Shutdown is still the best thing to do.

[CanaBalistic]

Yeah i realize all that but i dont have problems with it getting slow (some might argue) But i have a plethora of things to help me out.

My registry gets cleaned and optimized once a week or more.
My memory gets a defrag and optimization as soon as my system goes idle.

I have no problems with viruses or buffer under-run errors.
I run a tight ship, and it shows. My computer runs as good as new all the time. Even though i havent had to reloaded windows or had any major problems in close to 2 years.

[monoflap]

Um.. I thought memory defragmenting was bunk . Anyway, I run a game server on a pentium 2 and it gets the job done. However it is scraping by the minimals :p . Personally, I think anything less than a Pentium 1 is worthless as far as actuall productivity and thats being pretty flexible. I would experiment with the reall oldies .