When stepping away from our laptops, a lot of us simply put the lid down and walk away. While that’s convenient in the sense that your laptop is ready to go whenever you are next, this behavior could be harming your laptop without you even realizing it.
Does Shutting Down Really Matter?
Yes, as long as you’re using a Windows laptop, it does. There are a lot more things that need to happen when you shut down your PC than when you just put it to sleep or put the lid down.
Based on what you’re doing with your laptop, shutting down can massively help increase the performance and longevity of your system. It clears the system memory, closes any apps running in the background or foreground, and turns off your computer the way it’s meant to be.
If you’re just walking away to get a glass of water, sure, you don’t need to shut down your laptop. But if you’re going to be carrying it around in your backup, I highly recommend turning it off.
Windows laptops handle sleep mode differently than MacBooks, and the fans can actually keep running for quite a while after you’ve put your PC to sleep.
Running fans in a backpack or laptop sleeve is very bad news for your laptop as that can overheat the device without you realizing it and can lead to thermal damage.
Benefits of Frequently Shutting Down Your PC
As you can probably guess by now, there are several advantages to shutting your PC down from time to time. Here are the two most important ones.
Performance
Shutting down your PC means you’re almost guaranteed to get better performance after the restart.
This is a byproduct of the shutdown, cleaning your system memory, closing stuck background processes, and just clearing out anything in the background that might be hogging system resources.
This is also why shutting down and restarting your PC tends to resolve seemingly random issues with your PC.
There’s a reason the first question your IT guy asks is whether you’ve restarted your PC. Windows automatically clears a bunch of things when you shut down your laptop or PC, meaning the system has more resources to use on the next reboot.
System Longevity
Shutting your Windows laptop down can help it last longer.
Unfortunately, Windows Modern Standby is extremely inconsistent and often drains your battery, even when your PC is sleeping. This means you’re using unnecessary battery cycles. Over the years, these cycles build up and cause the battery to lose its capacity to maintain a charge.
What About Sleep Then?
The sleep feature on your Windows laptop isn’t entirely useless, but it’s not intended to be a substitute to shutting your PC down.
Put your PC to sleep if you’re going to be using it again in a short while, but if you’re done for the day, it’s always better to shut down your device. You can even set a Windows sleep timer to shut down your computer after a certain period.
I used to almost exclusively put my laptop to sleep or hibernate it every time I was done using it. Over time, this caused performance issues so bad that I had to reset my system and start with a fresh installation of Windows because there was too much junk built up in the system, and a restart wasn’t able to clear it all.
It also meant that if I was rushing to class, chances are I was starting the day with my laptop’s battery taking a 10 to 20 percent hit. Not a great number on gaming laptops that are infamous for lower battery lives on account of their more powerful hardware.
If you’re stepping away from your device for a short break or even a couple of hours, it’s absolutely fine to put the lid down or put your laptop to sleep. However, if you’re done for the day, or are going to be carrying your laptop in a bag or sleeve, shut it down.
Your machine needs its daily rest just as much as you do.
