Marine Electronics Forum - Turn off or leave on?
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crystalc
08-19-2005, 04:40 PM
After 30 years of using high end paper recorders, I finally had to bite the bullet and install a colour sounder.
Always turned off the paper recorder when anchored at holes since did not want to waste paper. And when you turned it back on it was instant.
Since these digital units must boot up everytime you turn them on, is it better to just leave them on?
My computers at home are always on as I have heard that if you continually cycle them, some components can wear out faster.
Since I stern anchor float/ drag the anchor versus dropping and bow anchoring every time, this equates to sometimes 60 stops and 60 powerups on the sounder.
Is this going to shorten it's life?
SWFLNavigation
08-19-2005, 05:01 PM
Crystalc, most of the FF on the market today are solid state, meaning its all in memory. There area few units out there that have harddrives like the new Lowrances units. Do you need to keep the units on? NO.. All you need to do is turn them on, get going and turn them off when you are done.
yachtjim
08-19-2005, 05:28 PM
Why don't you just leave it on? As long as you rbatts are not going dead. I pretty much leave my stuff on for the whole day when I take the boat out whetehr its running or not. Love those Optima batteries.
rwidman
08-19-2005, 05:46 PM
I leave my Chart Plotter on.
frogboat
08-20-2005, 07:01 AM
i can't verify this, but all the charter captains in our area swear that running a ff while bottom fishing reduces the catch. they say the sonar sound runs the fish off. anybody done any experimenting in this area. doesn't seen to bother fish when trolling. i don't do much bottom fishing, but when i do, i keep my ff on.
frog
Eyeball
08-20-2005, 04:14 PM
crystalc - 8/20/2005 2:40 AM
My computers at home are always on as I have heard that if you continually cycle them, some components can wear out faster.
This is true. It is the heating up and cooling off that causes the wear and tear. But when you get that critical about it, you also need to weight the benefit of leaving a unit on to the potential for screen burn-in of any static image. Won’t happen immediately, but cumulatively, it will.
Btw, my computer has been running continuously since 1998. And just as soon as I get up the nerve to it off, I’m loading Windows XP.
:)