i leave it on all the time, should i shut it down when i am not using it. i found this, https://www.lifewire.com/shut-computer-down-or-not-4135231, and shut down

I leave mine on all day because I use it often. I put it to sleep at night mostly to turn off the fans which are pulling in dust and cat hair. Then I wake it up in the morning. Once a week on Sunday night, I completely shut it down to clear out the virtual memory.

thank you very much.

I leave mine on all day but shut it down completely when I go to bed, unless I am downloading something. I've never liked "sleep mode" as I've always had trouble"waking" it up. Sometimes I leave my older computer on over night though but usually just for one night (for my own weird reason).

This is pretty much what I do. Another reason I shut mine down completely before I go to bed is in case there is a power outage (which we have far too many of here - they have ultra-sensitive settings for the power lines due to fire danger, and this has made things even worse during the months of June through October).

I used to have problems with my computers waking up from sleep when I was running XP and Windows 7. But now that I'm running Windows 10, I've never had any issues at all. I never use the hibernate option because it takes so long to come back.

I finally got everything on an uninterruptible power supply, so I feel a little better about outages around here. We don't have the issues you do, Marian, but storms seem to take power lines down at least once or twice a year.

I have always completely shut down my computer at night. And have used an uninterruptable power supply for years too

I always shut mine down every night and even though my laptop is not the most powerful out there, to get my laptop up and running from shut down to being able to use it is very fast.
I agree with Draclvr for those of you who do Not shut down your computers or laptops, you should at least Once a week reboot it, not only for clearing the cash, but if there are any important updates needed to be done it will give it a chance to do so.