Benefits of running Apache, MySQL, FileZilla as services?

[marvster]

Just installed XAMPP Windows and it seems to be working great! One newbie question though:

I think I understand the benefits of running Apache, MySQL, etc. as services, but if I'm only using XAMPP for local development and only work on it once or twice a day, are there benefits to *not* running it as a service?

Does running it as a service eat up a lot of CPU overhead?

If I don't run it as a service, is there any instability associated with manually starting Apache and MySQL only when I need them, then shutting them down?

Thanks for any insight,

Marv

[imilanez]

If you're only going to work on your site once is a while then there is no need for you to have the servers running all the time, just launch them when you need them, that way you don't have to spend time waiting for information to o to and from swap memory, this normally happens anyway, but if you keep the servers running continuosly then they eat up some memory from your sistem so that you have to swap out chunks of memory more often than you would if the services where turned off.

That's about it though.

Hope it helps.

Ivan Milanez Castellanos

[marvster]

Thanks, Ivan. That's what I thought, but as your sig says...

Cheers,

Marv

[no_listing]

There is only really one real benefit of running any program as a service:
It will run automatically in the background with or without a user logged on to the computer. It will also survive a logoff (meaning when someone logs off Windows won't stop it running).

[Sharley]

What version of XAMPP for Windows did you install?