Which is better for a laptop? Leave on or shut down and reboot +&+

I have a Dell Precision M4800.

I have developed the habit of using the laptop for a short time, stop, come back later and use again, and again and again. I start around 8 in the morning and finish off around 7 or 8 in the evening. I never write/translate/design for more than 10 - 15 minutes at a time.

My question: Is it better for my laptop to leave it on all day, or to shut it down and reboot it some 20 times a day?

I am thankful in advance for all advice.

If you have a spinner HDD, the on and off cycles on it will wear it out faster than just leaving it on and spinning.

I leave mine on all day, just close the lid when I am not using it. I turn if off at night.

I set my laptops to sleep when the lid closes and to wake when the lid opens. It only takes about a second to wake so I tend to close the lid even if I'm only going to be away for a few minutes. I let them sleep when I do, but if I don't expect to be back for a day or so I'll hibernate them instead so the battery doesn't drain. It can be up to a month before they get an actual restart, and that's only because there'll be a new cumulative update to install.

I can remember a time when a shut down and restart was essential after a day's use. Memory leaks or depleted resources could slow Windows to a crawl after too many days between restarts. W'95 and to some extent XP suffered from this, but it doesn't seem to be so much of a problem these days.

Jacee said:

I leave mine on all day and shut down at night to reboot in the morning.

This

Because I mostly use the laptop downstairs during the day I don't want the cats messing with it and so I unplug it and bring it up in a bag each night. That move might save it in the rare nighttime power surge thing.

Bree wrote: I set my laptops to sleep when the lid closes and to wake when the lid opens.

Ah, Bree, if only I knew how to do that! I don't quite understand the process as explained in my "Search" (magnifying glass icon). If you know of a page that explains it in understandable English I would appreciate a link or url. TIA. Tony.

This link should give you the info that you need. As noted in the quoted text Windows puts your laptop into sleep mode when you close the lid so you shouldn't have to change anything but just in case yours is not already set this way the link will show you how and what settings you need to either keep it this way or to change that and have it stay on when the lid is closed. Then the choice is yours.

How to Keep Your Laptop On With the Lid Closed on Windows 10

Windows 10 normally puts your laptop into low-power sleep mode when you close the lid. This can be a problem when hooking your laptop up to an external monitor. Use the Control Panel—not Windows 10’s Settings app—to change this behavior.