A new article addresses the perennial question of whether it’s better to leave the computer on all the time, or shut it down at night. In the past that question has focused on energy consumption, but now an additional question is whether leaving the computer on increases your security risk, by exposing your PC to more attacks than if you were to shut it off.
And the short answer continues to be – leave the computer on, all the time. Power consumption during idle time is trivial and outweighed by the stress caused by turning the components off and on. And if you have a security hole putting you at risk of attack from outside, then just fix it – an open hole will be exploited regardless of whether the computer is on for two hours or 24 hours a day.
