Shut down? Or not?

I suspect that responders to this thread are like I, they are always plugged in and in sleep mode during inactivity (rather that shut down). Dell, for a while, in the past, had instruction on this matter of battery upkeep, different from other brands. But for some reason, Dell has since removed it. So now, no brand offers such guidelines. The internet has many VAGUE related blogs that just confuse me rather than clearly direct me to either shut down or not. And now, W10 forum guruses are just as noncommittal. Speaking of hibernation. I have removed that option from both my laptops (W10 and W11) because it is so bulky (in nearly GB rather than just a few MB's.).

Keeping a Workstation labtop on should run around 10-20w while idling.
Keeping a Labtop in shutdown is good for the battery. Why?

A Charged battery is like a muscle lifting a weight. If you keep it in this state %100 when your not using it.
It will slowly lose it's charge.

A battery at %40 is ideal. Because the weight is not that heavy.

Leaving a battery at %0 could often lead it to not being able to hold any charge at all. This is why many Batteries from China
( including car batteries ) will often be discharged.

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The ultimate answer would be to modify the battery bay. Meaning you need to open up the battery compartment and replace
whatever is inside with AA rechargeable batteries in a row. This could also be done with any E-bike as well. Keeping in mind the batteries must hold a similar charge in total to the one being replaced. This is done with some tools but is not hard to accomplish. Only problem is ripping open a dead battery to see what could be done about the "no charge situation".

Car batteries ( all ) could be restored by pouring special salt solution inside of it, or even water if it is dried up.
This was done with 1950's cars until about the end of segregation/jim crow and the start of the 1960's. Afterwards late 1970's
came and cars was built with problems with factories claiming to fix these problems. Racism ( or consumerism ) gave us the
dumbfounding battery blow-up resulting in millions of crap Chinese made batteries. Again one time you would drive your vehicle to a service station, and your battery would be made a new. It is like we are living in a backwards mentality of batteries just to keep us spending money.

Ok, let me ask simply: Which is preferable? (1) shut down at bedtime and restart at breakfast (2) never shut down and just put to sleep while inactive. Another question: when do I unplug? Is it harmful to be always plugged in?

There seems to be a lot of confusion on the topic of battery care. Here is my take:

Leaving a computer plugged in is not ideal for the battery life if your computer charges the battery to 100%. This is because LiIon batteries are under greater "stress" when left fully charged for extended periods of time. Many laptops from Dell, HP, ASUS, etc. have functionality to limit the charge level for this reason. For example, the laptop I am using at this moment has the ability to turn charging off when you reach either 60% or 80% of charge.

Please note that how large of an effect this has on the total lifespan of a battery is something that I see constant debate over. There is no doubt that not leaving a battery fully charged for extended periods of time helps the overall lifespan, but it's not like this will kill your battery in only a few months.

Aside from this factor, the only other real factor that I can see how much battery you consume during the time period in sleep. As an example, suppose that over the course of a month, you computer uses a total of 2 complete charge cycles on the battery. This translates to 24 cycles in a year. So, after one year you have shortened the lifespan of your battery by 24 cycles.

Here is what I used to do vs what I do now:

In the past, when I had laptops that did not have modern standby, I would put then into sleep mode if I thought that I would use the computer again the same day. But at the end of the day, I would shut down the system, trading a few extra seconds startup in the morning for reduced battery usage overnight. Note that those laptops still used a fair amount of battery in sleep.

I now have a laptop that uses Modern Standby and uses very little energy when in standby. I would estimate that it uses less than 5% battery on a long overnight. I set the laptop to transition automatically from standby to hibernate if more than 10% battery gets used so that pretty much means that I won't go to hibernation unless I have not used the laptop in about 24 hours.

But it's also easy to overthink this. I have one really old laptop that had no way to set it to charge short of 100% and this machine has been plugged in almost constantly for years. That laptop is now 12 years old, and I am still on the original battery and it's working just fine. While I like to take care of my equipment, I still think that you can go overboard. Personally, I think that you should just set it however you prefer and don't get too hung up on a small difference in overall lifespan of the battery. After a few years, just replace the battery rather than have to be paranoid over it. If you have to replace the battery every 5 years or so I would be fine with that.

Thanks for being brutally honest and helpful. I happen to agree with you100%. Thus, I consider this case closed.

I just ran across a podcast online ... all about computer maintenance. For a change, the podcaster is straight to the point with one particular recommendation: PC's should NOT be shut down daily; rather, once or twice weekly, at bedtime and NEVER through Power button. Turn off should be through Shut down in Power option (instead of sleep, restart or hibernate). The explanation is too technical for me ... something about letting PC to do self-maintenance and updates in Shut down mode. Sounds reasonable.