I’ve wondered about this question for a while: what’s better, turning your laptop completely off, or just putting it to sleep?

When I first got my laptop, I was really good about powering it off completely. Then I started using a program that turned my laptop into an alarm clock that plays music with gradually increasing volume. It’s a great wakeup plan paired with my cell phone alarm. Doing so means I have to put my laptop to sleep, otherwise it won’t be able to wake itself up to play music. After that, I stopped shutting down my system entirely every night, even if I don’t need to use the alarm clock.

It’s so much more convenient resuming right away. I’m also a really big tab person, so sometimes I’ll have a ton of tabbed windows open. If I don’t shut my computer off, I can avoid having to open up all those tabs again. Laziness for the win!

Anyway, for the well-anticipated answer! I did a quick search online and here are three links: Yahoo, OSXDaily, and Inhabitat. Basically, it seems to be a unanimous answer that it really doesn’t matter. Great news for me! It’s up to your personal preferences, but as for what’s better for your machine, it really doesn’t matter. The wear-and-tear from powering the hardware on and off isn’t any more damaging than having your computer be put to sleep and awakened. If you like waking your computer from sleep and using it right away rather than starting up the whole system again, then that’s fine! It’s just good to remember to at least reboot your system once in a while to install any updates.