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Should You Shut the Computer Down?
If you're the PC guy in the family or some other group, you've
probably been asked this question: "At night should I turn my computer
off?"
Ever since normal people have had computers, this question has made
the rounds with a variety of "expert" answers. The early versions
presented a trade-off between power consumption and stress on components.
Turning the computer on or off, so the theory goes and accurately
I believe, is the most physically stressful thing you do to it all
day, so I think most experts have advised that it's better to leave
the system on.
But in the age of the Internet, and especially in the age of broadband
connections, there's a new angle probably more significant in the
average case than all that wear and tear stuff. Some would claim that
if you have one of those "newfangled" always-on broadband connections,
then you're exposing your PC to more attacks than if you were to shut
it off during periods of disuse. (Am I disparaging this attitude with
my tone enough? Can you tell where I'm going with this?).
To sum up in advance, this idea places all the emphasis in the wrong
places. If your PC is vulnerable to attack, the answer isn't to stay
offline more; you should plug the hole. If it's insecure, it will
be insecure for the time you use it, and that will be plenty enough
time for someone to compromise it.
I should mention where I stand on the power vs. stress angle. It's
better for the health of your system to just leave it on. The power
consumed is, at worst, comparable to leaving a light bulb on, especially
with modern Energy Star components, disks that spin down, monitors
that shut themselves off, and operating systems that know how to manage
power, even on desktop systems. (Incidentally, light bulbs will also
live longer if you leave them on, not that I advocate gratuitous waste
of energy.)
There are, however, a number of other issues that should, in some
circumstances, be considered. Some PCs are loud and you might not
want the ambient noise. Also, PCs can generate heat, although a modern
desktop PC, if not actually doing anything, should manage its own
power well enough not to heat the room. (This is certainly true of
Windows; I don't know how efficient power management is in other operating
systems.
Because I no longer consider myself plugged into the hardware market,
I asked my longtime colleague Nick Stam, Executive Senior Technical
Guy at both PC Magazine and ExtremeTech.
I specifically asked him about a newer theory I'd heard that components
are reliable enough in stress conditions that leaving them on all
the time raises the likelihood that you will encounter problems having
to do with long lifetimes, i.e., that you'll run into the mean time
between failures. Nick has no more quantitative data than I, but he
too suspects that the stress of startup and shutdown is more of a
real-world risk than long life.
In recent years, the part I've seen fail most often in PCs is the
power supply, definitely the part that gets stressed the most at power-up
and power-down, but also the one with the most mechanical stress on
it.
But back to security: The answer to this was well-expressed recently
with a minor industry "event," "Personal Firewall Day."
It's a site and PR campaign from an industry consortium called "Everybody
But Symantec." Of course, it's not actually called that—it
has no name—but I don't understand why Symantec isn't involved.
The group consists of McAfee, Microsoft, Sygate, TruSecure and Zone
Labs—recently acquired by Check Point Software Technologies.
Even though the name of the campaign referred to one recent day the
consortium pitched as "Personal Firewall Day," in fact every
minute of every day should be personal firewall day. The vendors named
above and others all offer firewall programs that can protect users
from the sorts of attacks that go bump in the night, whether you're
at your computer or not. Whether you choose to turn your computer
off or not, you still need to run a firewall, and the personal firewall
is the best option for most people. PC Magazine recently reviewed
several of these products, if you're looking to choose one.
Microsoft has recognized the importance of personal firewalls too.
Window XP and Windows Server 2003 come with a rudimentary firewall
called Internet Connection Firewall. ICF isn't a very useful firewall,
although users running it are better off than users without it. The
upcoming Windows XP Service Pack 2 will upgrade ICF and rename it
"Windows Firewall." PC Magazine recently took a good hard
look at it. Windows Firewall won't have all the features of third-party
personal firewalls—for instance, it won't have tight control
over programs on your system making outbound communications—but
it will be turned on by default and will offer much more control over
the security of your system than exists today in Windows out of the
box.
Running away from a problem usually is not a good solution to the
problem, and turning off your computer to avoid Internet attacks is
the worst kind of running away. It's not even effective. Unless you're
going to avoid the Internet altogether you will be attacked, and if
you're attacked you need to have protection, and that's why there's
personal firewall software. Not only will you have a fighting chance
against the problem, but by making it harder for attackers you'll
be part of the solution.
Security Center Editor Larry Seltzer has worked in and written about
the computer industry since 1983.
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