[tw] : Log Out! (Once Per Day)

“Log Out! (Once Per Day)”
From:	Seth Dillingham	In Response To:	Top of Thread.
Date Posted:	Saturday, January 21, 2006 5:54:23 PM	Replies:	4

Enclosures:	None.

By some odd coincidence, three times this week I've come across Mac OS X users who don't know the benefits of logging out. That is, they either leave the machine running at night (still logged into their user account), or they put the machine to sleep. They rarely -- if ever -- log out, and only reboot when "something is wrong" or after installing a system update.

My advice: log out once per day. You might just log out at night when you're done using the computer, leave the machine running, then log in again in the morning.

(It's ok to let the monitor/display/screen/whatever-you-call-it go to sleep.)

This accomplishes a couple of things, at least:

If you generally run the same software applications most of the time, it will clear out a lot of memory and give those apps a chance to "start over." This is a very good thing for nearly every modern program: most will run faster, and it will put a stop to some "weird behavior" (that's the technical term). This helps on Windows, too.
Leaving your Mac running (but logged off) at night allows the system (via a utility called cron that you'll never see) to run some system maintenance utilities: another minor performance boon, and it will save a little space on your hard drive. (I actually don't know if Windows does anything like this also.)

There may be other benefits I haven't thought of.

Update January 28, 2006: Please see this post for some clarification and more information.

Discussion Thread:

Re: Log Out! (by Philippe Martin at 1/21/2006)

At 17:02 -0500 21/01/06, Seth Dillingham wrote: >There may be other benefits I haven't thought of. Freeing
Or have a Cocktail (by Clark Venable at 1/22/2006)

This is going to seem like comment spam, but I use Cocktail to compensate for my inability to just log
- Re: Or have a Cocktail (by Seth Dillingham at 1/22/2006)
  
  On 1/22/06, Clark Venable said: >This is going to seem like comment spam, but I use Cocktail to compensate
  - RE: Or have a Cocktail (by Philippe Martin at 1/22/2006)
    
    At 12:41 -0500 22/01/06, Seth Dillingham wrote: >There are definitely alternative ways to make sure
  - Re: Or have a Cocktail (by Clark Venable at 1/22/2006)
    
    On 1/22/06 12:41 PM, "Seth Dillingham" <seth@macrobyte.net> wrote: > So are you saying that you shut
    - RE: Or have a Cocktail (by Seth Dillingham at 1/23/2006)
      
      On 1/22/06, Clark Venable said: >> So are you saying that you shut down at night, or that you just put
RE: Log Out! (Once Per Day) (by Nat Irons at 1/28/2006)

When you refer to cron tasks, do you mean something other than the daily, weekly, monthly scripts under
- RE: Log Out! (Once Per Day) (by Seth Dillingham at 1/28/2006)
  
  On 1/28/06, Nat Irons said: >When you refer to cron tasks, do you mean something other than the >daily,
  - Re: Log Out! (Once Per Day) (by Brian Carnell at 1/28/2006)
    
    Seth, the update link at the bottom of this post just links back to this post, and not to your new post
  - RE: Log Out! (Once Per Day) (by Nat Irons at 1/28/2006)
    
    It's news to me that 10.4 will go back and catch up missed cron tasks. That's really interesting. My
Again I Say: Log Out Once Per Day (by Seth Dillingham at 1/28/2006)

My instructions to log out once per day were well received by some, but not by others and it's clear

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“Log Out! (Once Per Day)”