wow, I've learned a lot from you guys. thanx first!but how to make my laptop sleep, I just know there's a hibernate function.

@Bad Penny

Glad you got your Laptop back and in working condition - a friend just got his acer 3GHz back - rich ****** - from repair. Still, I remain unconvinced in buying a laptop, too much money to throw away if it breaks, least with desktops you can repair them!

Steve

I disagree...

The one thing that damages laptops most is the Heat differentiation, as in keep turning it on at an avarage temperature of say 40 or 50, and then turning it off to its normal cold temperature..

Why? Because its Metal.. and metal expands and contracts, which slowly wears and tears it (i wont go deep into physics, philosophy, or medeval orthadox paradoxes). Personally if i were to use a laptop in the next 3 or 4 hours (machine in the next 6 hours.. hence never off), then i'd rather keep it on.

But what about the heat?.. As for that, dont worry too much, because laptops are made to withstand heat at such compressed spaces. A lot of R&D has been put into that. Heck why else would you have fans, copper/alu heatsinks, alekh, alekh..?

Even if the worst happens, you have warrenty on it. The first thing i always get when buying a new laptop is an extended warrenty for some 100 dollars.. hey.. if i payed 2000 dollars, might as well pay 100 for another few years of warrenty

The laptops i had lasted years. The only thing that didnt last in them were their LCD Screens... which is a shame.. So make sure to Auto-turn it off after 10 minutes of no usage or so.. (but dont close the cover, LCD screens are sensitive to heat generated from the laptop)

A good notebook should have no problem with this.

As noted, there are batteries that are not properly protected against permanent charging. If you suspect you suffer from this you should take the baterry out before operating constantly.

Another big thing is ventilation and load.

There are some notebooks that are not properly ventilated and you can kill them by constant high CPU load in e.g. a non-airconditioned room. If if you don't kill them outright, it wears them out.

Take into account 3D chips suck up a lot of power when in use, obviously 3D screensaver are a strict no-no for notebooks as they load both CPU and GPU.

Some braindead notebooks have ventilation intakes or outlets on the underside. Sell on ebay and get a proper machine. Alternatively, make sure there is always just a smooth surface below it. Operations on laps (it's not a laptop if it has such ventilation), on beds, on table cloths or between desk junk can be deadly.

Having said all that, I have some Dell-alike P3 which is happy as a fish in water with battery connected and everything. I don't think I ever turned it off since the move and it lies on fabric all the time.