Sleep or shut down at night?

Hi, it just occurred to me that in summer with frequent lightning storms especially during the night, might it be a good idea to shut the computer down and disconnect the power adapter at night?
I tend to use the computer plugged in during the day, with short periods of battery use, and then at night I leave it plugged in and just close the lid. Even with old PC's I did this without a problem, but with my new MBP I don't want to take any chances!
Thanks,
Karen

karenr wrote:
Thanks.. re. shutting down at night, I thought there was an issue of wear and tear from starting up so often.. otherwise it would certainly be simpler to shut down and not worry about nighttime power surges.
I don't worry about wear and tear, because although technically it might be better to run your computer at full power 24/7 to avoid premature wear from thermal and power cycling, realistically nearly every Mac user either sleeps or shuts down their laptop at least once a day whether that's at night or merely to transport it (since it is a laptop after all) and therefore powering off is the norm, and it is not causing mass early laptop deaths.
We are also weighing leaving the computer plugged in versus the potential damage from a lightning strike, and we're saying the potential damage from sleeping or shutting down at night is assumed to be less severe than that of a direct lightning hit.
Re. sleeping the computer all night and draining the battery, I do that once a month to calibrate the battery, but isn't it recommended to not drain deeply too often?
You are right that is is recommended to not do deep discharges too often. But an overnight sleep does not drain the battery that far, maybe a few percent. What I didn't mention is that if your battery is new and fully charged, it will probably last around a week in sleep mode. One night off the charger isn't going to drain the battery unless, as I mentioned, it's an old battery with a fraction of its original capacity.

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