hammonitup wrote:
The second thread you linked to ended with what i just quoted above and it does get to the crux of both questions, but was never discussed further. I presume Nord doesn't have a stance on this either, or it would have been quoted by someone.
I think the reason why the question doesn't get discussed further is because nobody (including Nord possibly, and other electronics manufacturers) knows the answer.* We all agree that power-on time and power cycles cause (at least theoretically) wear on the hardware, but if you're looking for an equation like "1 power cycle equals to X hours of power-on time", nobody knows what the X is.
Hence the circular statement that electronics should not be left powered on for "too" long, with nobody knowing how long is this "too" long.
We'd all agree that one week is too long a time. We'd also agree that 10 minutes is too short. Where to put the line between the two is, without a definitive answer, arbitrary and probably boils down to personal preference or rather "intuition". Apparently, a few hours is where people's intuition starts getting blurred between those two extremes, given that, as you noted, people on this thread are split about 50% on whether they'd leave the thing on in the scenario you described. Personally I think I'd leave it on.
*I think it's only natural that nobody knows the answer, not because there is no answer, but because knowing such an answer would imply a massive testing spanning a time frame of several years, at the end of which you would still be left without conclusive data. And I think that's good, because it means that failing events are so rare (either power on and off policy you adopt) to make a meaningful statistical assessment impossible.
As far as I remember, wtibbit has worked in electronics for years, and seems very knowledgeable. If he says it doesn't matter if you turn it on or off because the impact on lifetime is negligible either way, I'm trusting him.
So in conclusion I wouldn't worry either way!
