Should I run my desktop 24/7?

I usually enjoy reading David Both's articles, this one too. Yet, it's surprising to say : let your car running overnight, it will last longer. I know, I know, cars and computers are quite different, but it's the same bucks gone away for useless burning, suspend-resume works so well. Need my electricity company's name David ?

[That Redhat blog spot does not have a user comments sub-section.]

FWIW: In 2002 I was running Folding@Home on my desktop system, a 2GHz x86 (I think it was AMD, but I don't remember for sure). I decided to do an experiment, for giggles: during a summer month when the central heat wasn't running, I ran F@H, and the following month didn't run it.

I found that F@H added roughly $10 to the electric bill, confirmed the following month when I resumed running F@H. That was a price I was willing to contribute to the work of F@H.

@gus3 The same for me. Since the virus thing struck, have been running BOINC traffic continuously on the home desktop and one in the garage that I use for other things.

If the machine is doing useful work, then it's not a waste to have it on. I would imagine that a reasonably efficient PC setup doing substantial work would be drawing about the same as a fridge/freezer.