How to use windows machine when not in use

ETC Microsoft Windows
1

Hi,

I use my laptop intermittlently.Is it good practice to keep my laptop in sleep mode when not in use and at the end of the day turn it off completely.

Please advice.

I am using windows xp .

Regards,
Maddy

2

Do you ever use mstsc.exe to remote into the laptop? If so, it has to be running.

I'm not sure what you mean by good practice. Leaving it on behind a good firewall is a reasonably safe thing to do. If other people can physically get to it when you are not around and it is not password protected, that's bad.

If you are worried about hardware degradation, don't. Unless you are a place where power browns out a lot, or there are power surges. Chances are fairly good that MS will deprecate your OS before you lose siginficant hardware. This has happened to me several times - Windows 95, CE. Now, XP will be down into the junk pile shortly. It came out in late 2001.