Leaving laptops on 24/7

[Trapper]

I've got a semi-old, semi-spare laptop at work where the battery is totally knackered.

I'm moving between schools at the moment and I could really do with an always machine at one of them that isn't a server. However desktops are in very short supply, so I was considering leaving this laptop on, and as the battery is dead treating it as a desktop.

This has always worried me. I'm not sure why we leave desktops on all the time with much more powerful PSUs, and NAS boxes with effectively the same external power source with no problem.

Can anyone else see an issue with doing this?!

[crc-ict]

I used to run an old laptop as a small NAS at home and so that was on 24/7 without any issue.

As with yours, that had a knackered battery.

[enjay]

Don't see a problem with that. Enable a screen saver on it though.

[3s-gtech]

Have an old laptop (minus screen) running Xibo here, that has been on 24/7 for the past couple of years. Not a problem.

[tigerstar]

I've done that with a number of things - running plasma displays, home server, etc. - and no problems.

[Danp]

Done it here a few times as well. I tend to prop the back of the laptop up a little too to help with air flow

[jonatkinson]

I do the same.. Have my Latitude e5510 on permanently at home, mostly for remoting onto from work. Been on for over 9months, not a blip

[SimpleSi]

My girls laptops are rarely switched off - they use them for media playback at night and just leave them on

Si

[Sephiroth]

I used to have a old G4 MacBook, salvaged from the old staff laptops, running as a Debian web server constantly. Only reason that I took it out of service (after more than 2 years) was that the hard drive failed.

[gshaw]

To be completely paranoid take the battery out so there's no possibility of it overheating... if it's knackered you don't lose anything feature-wise...

[Sephiroth]

If it's going to be permanently plugged in, then there's no reason that you can't. I kept the battery in mine so that if we had a power-cut, it would shut down gracefully with a scripted power setting, rather than just dying.