That is the question. I almost never turn off the computer, but sometimes flick it off for just a second or two. Is this bad for it? Does it need rest? Thanks!
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For the most part, computer hardware doesn’t care about what time it is. So wall clock time is something that is mostly for your benefit, or for knowing that a particular moment is the best opportunity for doing something that would annoy the user if they were there at the same time. Time.
Now that said, lots of things can expire like licenses and tasks and stuff. Like if you have a certificate that’s only good till January 4th 2023 then the computer needs to know when it’s January 5th 2023 to make sure that it isn’t using the expired stuff .
As far as intervals not running or powered down, that the only difference that makes is letting everything cool off.
And then there is the caveat to this. Some things are maintained in the computer by a capacitor power. When’s you turn something off and turn it back on again the rule of thumb is at least 10 seconds to let those capacitors discharge.
If anything more complicated than that is going on then you probably got something wrong with your hardware.
For example, while working on a particular system some years ago, the ACPI chipset would get set into an odd state while being powered down. It would wait for a user to push the power on button before it would start back up but the hardware didn’t have a power on button. The hardware was getting sent back and forth to the vendor because it couldn’t be to power back on again but when it arrived at the vendor’s place it worked fine.
That was because in the 7 days it took to get from the customer to the vendor. Something would finally finish discharging and the ACPI chipset would be back to zero power state.
Aside: we did not keep the hardware.
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