[Monkey Face]

Totally off-topic (if there is one, here...)

Is OK to “sleep” a computer, or should it just be shut down? I’ve never done it, thinking it’s not a good idea, but...I’m curious.

[Monkey Face]

PS: And if I don’t use it for an hour and it “shuts down,” is it asleep on its own? Or just comatose?

[Dead Corpse]

Letting it enter Standby or Sleep mode is just fine as long as it doesn't appear to cause you any other issues. Some of the older implementations could cause system hangs or other annoying behaviors.

Much better hardware/firmware/software these days. If I'm going to be away from a machine for a few days, I'll just shut it down. For over night, let it sleep...

[HKMk23]

Putting your machine to sleep for awhile should be no problem. I do that with my laptop if I’m going to step away for longer than a half hour, but if I don’t plan to get back to it for a long time — say, several hours — I just go ahead and shut it down.

I’ve read of people having issues with their systems being in “sleep” mode, but those issues were with the various flavors of Windows XP. I haven’t read of any sleep issues for Windows 7 users.

[Darksheare]

Depends on teh operating system.
Windows needs to be periodically restarted as it tends to lose track of memory after awhile, literlly “Hey, where did 128 meg of memory go?” because Windows tends to select and reserve memory for applications but not let it go once the application is done.
I don’t know about Macs other than I have succeeded in crashing them horrifically without trying. [I has talent]
So I’m going to say “It’s probably a better idea to shut down and restart”.