Just a quick rant about the fact that many users (including people who should know better) seem to have some sort of belief that computers (especially laptops) are not meant to stay powered on for extended periods of time, and that doing so isn't normal use and is likely to damage the hardware.

Needless to say, I don't agree at all with this view. In my opinion, non-faulty hardware should be able to withstand maximal load for arbitrarily long periods of time. To say things differently, if a computer fails under such circumstances, it isn't normal: it means that the computer isn't working properly.