Kim Komando

[Pappy13]

Anyone listen to Kim Komando or read her website?  I have a friend of mine that sends me e-mails from her from time to time where she gives advice to people about their PC.  While I don't pay a lot of attention usually, my gut instincts tell me this person is an idiot or is getting bad advice from someone.

In her latest issue, Kim was talking about UEFI and boot times and actually told the person to consider switching to a MAC because it uses UEFI and it's not available yet for PC's.  WTF?  Does she realize that this person would have to learn a completely new OS just so she can save 20 seconds on boot up?  Unless you boot up like 400 times a day, you're waisting your time and if you ARE booting up 400 times a day you are REALLY waisting your time.  I boot up about once a week, maybe a couple times a week if there are a lot of miscrosoft updates, but even then most times the PC reboots itself when I'm not even there, why would I care how long it takes?
 
UEFI, while nice really isn't that big of a deal.  That's why it's taken motherboard manufacturers so long to swith over, because it just really isn't all that necessary.  What Kim should have asked her is why should she care about faster boot times?  Boot times have already been cut down in recent years because of faster booting operating systems.  If her PC takes a long time to boot up, the chances are it's not the BIOS that is the problem but rather that her PC has TONS of applications running at boot up that's slowing it down.  That's a common problem.
 
Besides, she shouldn't be booting up that often anyway.  I'll bet this person is somone who thinks she needs to shut her PC off everyday.  That is NOT something you should do.  Turning a PC on is one of the MOST harmful things you can do to your PC.  It sends a sudden surge of electricity through the motherboard.  You should leave your PC on 24x7 and have it set up to go into hibernate mode when you are away from it for an extended period of time.  A PC in hibernate mode uses up a very small amount of electricity, barely more than a turned off PC, however when it comes out of hibernate mode it doesn't have the sudden rush of electricity through the motherboard that turning the PC on does and it also doesn't have to reinitialize the BIOS or reboot the operating system, therefore it will be ready for use more quickly than turning your PC off and on again.

Am I wrong?  Is Kim an idiot?

[fyo]

Am I wrong?  Is Kim an idiot?

I have no idea who Kim is...

Other than that, if you wanted to speed up your boot process without switching OS, getting a solid state drive would be an easy solution.

I boot my home computer up a couple of times a day. Sure, I guess I could hibernate it or set it on standby, but I want to save the juice and not have to bother with hibernating (which takes almost as long as shotdown / boot). In any event, my new Ubuntu install boots up insanely fast. Win7 quite a bit more slowly (probably close to twice as long), but it's not something that would drive my decision on which OS to use.

[Pappy13]

Here's the wikipedia entry.  I really don't know much about her either, just what I have seen from the e-mails my friend sends me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Komando

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

I heard her on the radio a few times.  I found her quite annoying.  While I don't recall hearing her saying anything wrong, I don't recall she said anything not known by everyone but the most novice computer users. 

[Dave Gray]

I've never heard of her either, and I'm pretty plugged in.

[Buddhagirl]

I used to listen to Kim Komando ages ago. My dad loves her.

[Spider-Dan]

I'll bet this person is somone who thinks she needs to shut her PC off everyday.  That is NOT something you should do.  Turning a PC on is one of the MOST harmful things you can do to your PC.  It sends a sudden surge of electricity through the motherboard.  You should leave your PC on 24x7 and have it set up to go into hibernate mode when you are away from it for an extended period of time.  A PC in hibernate mode uses up a very small amount of electricity, barely more than a turned off PC, however when it comes out of hibernate mode it doesn't have the sudden rush of electricity through the motherboard that turning the PC on does and it also doesn't have to reinitialize the BIOS or reboot the operating system, therefore it will be ready for use more quickly than turning your PC off and on again.

So by not turning off your PC every day, your PC may last 5-10 years past the point when it is technologically obsolete, instead of only 1-2 years?

I turn off my PC every day and I can't remember the last time I replaced a PC because the motherboard died (as opposed to it simply being obsolete).  I'm not sure what you mean by "hibernate" mode; in Windows, hibernate is saving the RAM to disk and then turning off, which is (from your standpoint) no different than shutting down.  I presume that you're talking about what Windows refers to as "suspend" or "sleep" mode, and I avoid those modes (in any OS) like the plague.  I see them as a breeding ground for memory corruption and I've never met another IT professional that recommends sleep mode.

I either turn my PCs off (usually hibernate, i.e. save-to-disk, for laptops) or leave them fully on and turn off the monitor.

[Thundergod]

^^^ Same here. I've always turned my system off, and the only times I've replaced my computers was due to upgrades. 
Not trying to change peoples habits, but:

...here are some consumer “myths” that are worth addressing:

•Turning your PC on and off wears it out. A decade ago, there was something to this, but not today, say Hershberg and others. It used to be that PC hard disks did not automatically park their heads when shut off, and that frequent on/off cycling could damage the hard disks. Today’s PCs are designed to handle 40,000 on/off cycles before a failure, and that’s a number you likely won’t reach during the computer’s five-to-seven-year life span.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/explore/turnoff-pc.aspx


and


Myth: Turning off my PC will use more energy when I turn it on again and cause other problems.

Fact: Do not be afraid to turn off your computer.  According to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, modern computers are not hurt by frequent shutdowns. Power down the entire computer system (printers and other equipment, too) at night and on weekends: This option will save energy and extend the life of your computer.  It is a common myth that turning computer equipment off and on is bad for it.  Research on current technology shows an improvement in system life when the equipment is turned off, since heat and mechanical stress are the two leading causes of computer failure.  On older equipment (15 years ago) there was concern about power cycling stress, particularly on hard disks, but this is not true on newer equipment.  Equipment will become obsolete long before failure due to power cycling.  Your equipment will also be less vulnerable to damaging voltage spikes cause by weather or power failures when it is turned off.

http://pec.putney.net/issue_detail.php?ID=2

To each their own though.

[Phishfan]

When I worked in an office IT wanted everyone to shut down the PC. It isn't standard practice that they need to stay on anymore.

[fyo]

Although I'm in favor of powering off, it's only fair to note that in many ways the pendulum has swung quite a ways back to "leave it on". Newer computers often use less than 5 W when in standby. Even turning the computer off doesn't get you to zero, with "soft off" (S5/G2) having been the standard for years. This allows all sorts of interesting things like turning the computer back on via a peripheral or over LAN (kind of sad that we're all paying for something that a tiny, tiny fraction of us ever use). It's not unrealistic that the difference between "off" and "stand by" for your computer is around 1 W.

Monitors and printers are the worst offenders, btw, with shockingly many consuming 10 W or more when supposedly off. The 5W above is just for the main box itself, of course.

The main argument for turning off your computer today is probably buggy hardware and software.

[Pappy13]

I actually used the wrong term.  The correct term according to Microsoft is Hybrid Sleep.  Hybrid Sleep writes the data in memory to disk and goes into a low power mode, but does not turn the PC completely off.  It is different from Sleep mode in that Sleep mode does not write the data in memory to disk, it just goes into a low power mode.  The advantage is that should the power supply go off, Windows can recover your data from disk.  Hybrid Sleep is actually enabled by default rather than sleep mode if your PC is capable of it when you press the sleep button.

I've used sleep mode for years and never had a problem with it.  I like it because it uses less power than when your PC is on, but doesn't require you to boot up.  My PC "awakes" from sleep mode in a matter of seconds.  I only power off completely if I'm not going to be on the PC for an extended period of time or if I had problems with a badly behaving app or something.

Things may have changed and perhaps powering on and off is no longer an issue, but using Hybrid Sleep is still faster than booting up.  I don't see why you would want to do that unless there was a good reason for it.  The amount of energy saved by shutting down completely is not really that much, so that doesn't concern me.  I also have my PC setup to download and install updates overnight when I'm not using the PC, by using Hybrid Sleep mode, the PC wakes up, checks for updates, installs and reboots without me having to do anything and I never have to wait for updates to be applied.  I've never seen anything that said sleep mode was bad for the PC, where I have read that turning it off and on especially multiple times a day is not really all that good for your PC.  Granted I don't think anyone is saying it's going to fry your motherboard.  I have my PC hooked to a good surge protector and I do unplug it during storms and such, so I'm not too worried about that.

I guess to each his own.  I'll do a bit more research and see if I can find anything negative about Hybrid Sleep mode.

Regardless, telling someone to consider switching to a Mac for quicker boot times is still idiotic in my opinion.

[Pappy13]

When I worked in an office IT wanted everyone to shut down the PC. It isn't standard practice that they need to stay on anymore.

I work in the IT department at Southwest Airlines and we all leave our PC's on.  We can login to our PC from home and use it just as if we were at work.  You couldn't do that if you turn it off at night.  Also, updates are installed to our PC's at night so we are encouraged to leave them on for just that reason so all updates are completed when you login the next day and don't have to wait for them to be installed.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

I work in the IT department at Southwest Airlines

Thread Hijack....

Just want to say you guys are my favorite Airline.  I haven't flown in while.  But when ever I had a choice I always choose southwest.  I like how you can pick your own seat as you board like on a bus.  I am paranoid about late to the airport so I am always like super early so I am always in the first group. 

I also liked the way the flight attendants did went thru the boring government regulated safety requirements without making sound like a boring government written regulation. 

[Pappy13]

Just want to say you guys are my favorite Airline.

Thanks.  I've only been with Southwest the last 2 years, but I have enjoyed it tremendously.  It's a great company to work for.