At the end of the day, do you put your computer to sleep, hibernate, or shut down? There is no right answer. This is pretty much person preference. That is why I would be curious to the results of the poll. Take the above poll.
my computer has only “Stand By” and “Turn Off” options (along with “Restart”)
so i guess “Stand By” is like “Sleep” so that’s what i picked
i only turn it off if (a) there are microsoft updates waiting to be applied, and (b) i’m not recording any movies or tv shows overnight (e.g. craig ferguson)
Whatever takes the least amount of time and doesn’t consume electricity, which is hibernate in my case. Though I do a restart every month or so, normally after a windows update.
My computer power supply has an on/off switch so that I can turn the power off completely after I shut the computer down.
That option was left out of the poll (since it is as different from shutting down as leaving the computer on - but in the opposite direction).
I shut it off completely.
Depends on the computer:
Main office desktop: always on, just lock 'er.
Main home desktop: goes to sleep in general
Laptops: sleep or hibernate depending on what is going on.
I shut it down then switch off at the mains.
shut down otherwise I couldn’t sleep with the humming noise of the fan!!
this happened to me too – until i opened up the case and vacuumed out all the crap (dust) that was clogging up the screen in front of the fan
yeah, ive done that too with my old baseunit but I’ve got a laptop connected up to a monitor, but the fan can be noisy :confused2 - it’s clean, i just think im too finicky cause I can’t sleep when there’s any sort of noise 
I don’t have enough voting options:
work computer: I do a restart, leave on so that the archive, backup and update processes can do their thing at night. I do shut off monitor and any peripherals.
home computers: I shut them all down as I don’t always know when I’ll get back on them. No need to waste (or pay for) electricity that’s not being used. Generally they are shut off at night and won’t be turned on until the next evening.
Work Computer: Turn off every night
Home computers: On all the time, unless they’re not doing anything.
On a side note do you turn of your home broadband router when it’s not in use? i do.
On that note, what about printers, monitors, speakers, etc?
i turn everything off, hope this covers everything
as for the broadband, i leave that on unless im not going to be on for a few days
I shutdown the computer if i’m not using it just to conserve electricity and minimize electricity bill. 
You’d save even more electricity if you actually turned it off rather than just shutting it down.
Shutting a computer down just leaves it in standby mode. You need an actual on/off switch to turn it off after it has shut down - either on the power supply or at the wall.
You crazy people who ‘hibernate’ or whatever you call it - are you sure you don’t have an umbilical cable attached somewhere?
I turn it off every night… Mainly because the pain-in-the-**** wireless mouse/keyboard will go cuckoo as soon as sleep/hibernate is activated, requiring a restart anyway.
Yeah, 'tis the last time I buy wireless 
Huh? 
Shut down = Turn Off
But yes, while the power supply is on, there will still be a small drain of electricity. Not nearly as much as when the computer is turned on, but it is a small trickle.
Ha!
Really, it starts 100x faster from hibernating and I can leave everything open, then pick it up the next day.