My wife's daughter insists on leaving her computer on, even when no-one is home, perhaps for 6 hours or more. Other than the waste of energy and cost, I have heard from somewhere that it is not a good idea to leave a computer turned on that has a broadband connection. We have Nortons virus and firewall (when the registration runs out I think I will change to something less hungry) with a wireless broadband connection. Her computer is directly connected (100Mbits) and my computer, laptop and iPaq are connected over the wireless connection. When not in use they are always turned off.
My understanding is that it is possible for hackers to automatically search for live connections and may be able to hack into the computer to gain access to your connection. I am also worried that other applications that you just "must have" like LimeWire, iTunes etc could be using the connection to allow file sharing etc when you are not using it. TaskManager is more than two screens long and she always complains about how slow it is (hmmm can't work out why?) Any thoughts?
At the moment if I come home and the computer is left on, I just "turn it off" and never shutdown properly, in fact if I am peeved enough I will start up a number of applications and turn it off before they are completely started
Unfortunately, this has only caused one "improper shutdown" so far
