It's actually a bit more stressful on the hardware to boot up, then to just run as I remember. The hard drive of course has more loading (as was mentioned) but that initial spin up to get it from 0 rpm to it's full operating speed. I seem to remember, it initially takes a bit more juice from the PSU to boot the thing, then to run it... Worst thing on hard drives, they used to tell people though would be to turn it off, and back on again before it has a chance to fully spin down...
If it's any indication, some of my hardware in here, I got my current system drive in December 2000, and my other hard drive in June 1998, both still running without a prob. Other hardware is newer (except for the floppy drive). My CD changer I got in Oct 1998 or so, and still runs, the CD changer always had problems (cycling CDs when it shouldn't) and has become all but unuseable now... Other stuff is newer because I needed upgrades, not failure. My father told me that the old Voodoo 3 3k I gave to him (he used to have an S3 Virge video decelerator) is not always comming up on a cold boot anymore, but runs otherwise...though he sometimes has to boot it several times... That card would be almost 6 years old now.
Personally, I don't like waiting for it to boot. Going through the BIOS isn't quick on my comp (as I run with SCSI drives), and then there's the OS load. I'm not the world's most patient person...when I want to use it, I want to use it, not watch it boot
I've run 24/7 since 1996 (when I got winNT 4.0), never really did try it with win95/98 (if win95 would have run 24/7 for any length of time :lol: ). I've never run into a problem with it. Starting in 2000, I put SETI on there, and have been running a distributed science program (currently 3 of them through BOINC) ever since.
BTW, it's the monitor that uses most of the power, rather then the comp. If power is a question, one can just turn the monitor off, but leave the comp running, if one so choses. Doing that, my electric bill went down from about $43 a month to $32 a month on just the monitor. It's also a 19" CRT...