Shutdown or Sleep

[iMac mini]

If this has been asked before I apologize. I will be buying a Mac mini 2011 the newest model, and I wanted to know if I should shutdown Mac every night or just put it to sleep.

I use a PC at home all day long, I use my PC 7 days a week. So I'm never away from my PC. Right now I run Linux on a PC & I turn it off every night & never have problems with hardware wearing out.

I keep reading reports that turning off the computer every night is a bad thing as it wears down the hardware, and I wanted to know what you guys do: Shutdown or Sleep?

thanks..........

[philiparcario]

sleep
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2010 Mm 2.4 C2D oem 320gb hdd 8gb ram
2012Mm base 2.5 with 16gb ram diy fusion drive
2012Mm quad with 8gb ram oem 1tb hdd

promise pegasus r6 3x 3tb + 3x 4tb =21tb hdds
lacie little big disk 2x 512gb ssds
synology 2tb disk station

[Mm]

I would only restart it maybe once a month. Let it sleep the rest of the time.
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mini #1: 1.4 Ghz, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB HD
mini #2: Late 2009 mini. 2.53 Ghz, 500 GB 7200 rpm HD. 4 GB RAM. Geekbench=3526
Black MacBook 2.4 Ghz
iMac G5 2.0 Ghz, 2 GB RAM, 250 Gb HD
Cube 1.4 ghz.

[fiat]

Unless I have to right jump to (stock) market info early next morning, I always turn off my mini (and turn off power) before I GO TO SLEEP. I am not sure, but wonder that keeping power on and letting computer sleep with several devices' lights on (display, printer, modem, mini, ...) would not only consuming more power (maybe tiny) but actually wear out the devices sooner than turn off the power for all. JMO

[Bandit Bill]

+1 sleep

Have you ever been in a room and the lightbulb all of a sudden just burnt out on you? Not likely... they typically always burn out when you turn them on. In discussion I have had with people who have had faulty logic boards in their Mac, I only know 1 person who had their logic board fail will using their Mac. 99% of the time it simply didn't turn on one day.

Macs are very power efficient in sleep mode practically as efficient as they are while turned off, but plugged in. I never recommend unplugging them unless there is a lightning storm. When you do this the computer must rely on the internal battery to keep the clock/system settings.