Re: [tlug] Speaking of computer usage ....

["SL Baur" <steve@example.com>]

On 2/29/08, Evan Monroig <evan.monroig@example.com> wrote:

> I always wonder why people boast at not having rebooted for 100 days
>  or so.  Usually I don't need my computer when I sleep so I turn it off
>  at night and I am quite happy at the energy savings that an off
>  computer gives me :).

Because we can?

My desktop at work stays on 24x7 because my time is precious to
me.  I have all the windows where I left them the night before text
intact, positioned to where I was last working and for transient
windows like terminal emulators, the priceless history text is still
there.

The only reason I can ever see for turning off a notebook as versus
just putting it to sleep is airplane travel.  As a matter of fact, I did
that with my MacBook Pro over the Christmas/New Years break.  It's
turned on now when I'm at work, though it's sleeping.

Saved state is important to me.  Since I know my machines are unlikely
in the extreme to crash, why not leave them on?  I don't even bother
to turn off my monitor at work because it has a powersaving mode
that kicks in.

>  I think that it make sense for computer to be on full time only for
>  servers or if you have some computations that last days.

You have a different usage pattern.  Continuous saved state, where
I can more or less immediately (less the time of entering my
password) go back to exactly where I was at the previous session
is important to me.

I've tried alternatives when they've existed and I've been in
environments where I had to share the console and they don't
work as well for me.[1]  If you like to watch a computer boot, run
only one application set to full screen then I suppose it doesn't
matter so much.

-sb

[1] Applications that save X Window state have traditionally been on
the rough side due to odd or non interpretations of ICCCM.  I think
that may have improved in the last 10 years, but I don't care because
I have a better solution.  I used to use an emacs lisp package that would
save all editor state at exit time and restore it at the next startup.  It
got really messy over time and invoking a second instance of the
editor was super-messy.

Oh, and I always run with save-buffers-kill-emacs advised to force
typing in y-e-s in order to quit the editor while at the same time
removing the C-x C-c keybinding.

(defadvice save-buffers-kill-emacs (around save-buffers-kill-emacs freeze)
  "Killing XEmacs is usually an unwise thing to do.
Make it just a little bit harder to do by accident."