Sleepmode or hibernation?

What do you guys do? Does the battery drain when in sleep mode? I have mine currently set up to sleep whenever I close the lid and that has seemed fine so far. It starts up super fast.

Whats the difference and most appropriate one?

 

Battery drains in sleep mode

 

The notebook keeps a slight power trickle while in sleep/standby, so the battery does drain, whereas Hibernate suspends to the hard drive. As long as you don't leave the notebook unplugged and in sleep mode for a week, you should be fine to keep using sleep mode, because it definitely "wakes" much faster from sleep than from hibernate.

 

Hibernating will also have more of a tendancy to cause BSOD's or lock ups.

 

If the computer is plugged in and I'm sleeping or away, I'll put it to sleep. For longer absences I hibernate it or turn it off. If I I need to move the computer it always is placed in hibernation or shut down.

 

Wow lots of varying opinions. I take my laptop to work with my every day. So far I've just set it to do sleep and I have had no issues. However i don't want to cause it damage.

Is it really not safe to move it around while in sleep mode? Aren't the hard drives powered down when in sleep and not moving?

 

The hard drives are powered down, but you don't want to risk loss of power during transport (say, for example, someone removes a battery without thinking) when you're in standby, so hibernate is the "safer" option. Honestly, I use standby over hibernate, too, and have never had a problem.

 

In my mind, the real danger is heat build up rather than data loss.

 

I constantly use standby. I have a 4.5 year old Dell 600m and I use it at least 4 hours per day. At a lecture, i open it up, it's starts up, i take notes, and at the end of the lecture, I close the lid, it sleeps, put it in my bag, and i'm off to the next class. The power usage is negligible (it'll last for days in sleep mode) and the HDs are powered off.

As for accidentally powering down the system, it seems that laptops have made a few steps backwards since I bought my 600m. My 600m has a very small built-in battery pack (i can access it underneath my primary battery) that allows the laptop to remain in sleep mode with NO AC OR BATTERY attached. It can sustain power for a couple minutes (even after 4.5 years of usage) with no other power source, which allows enough time to switch primary batteries while in standby.

I think you should be alright with standby.

(another step back from 4.5 years ago is my 600m has gigabit ethernet standard, whereas it's not een an option on the new ones!...but that's for another thread! )

 

What about in my scenario. ...I get home start the laptop and don't shut it off until I go to sleep (4-6 hours later).

Would it be best to turn it all the way off or just hibernate in that case?

 

I just use sleep/standby, and delete the hibernation partiton. If I'm gonna be away from my laptop to the point where I might need hibernation, I'd just turn it off instead.

 

vista owners will know that vista sleep it very good when it works!, and ive heard that it can stay in sleep for a cuple of months!

 

My new M1530 defaults to hibernate when shutting down. Was this a Dell choice? I think you can change this default, as well as the default for pressing the power button and for closing the lid. But the function key in combination with the F1 key causes the computer to hibernate even though the F1 key shows the symbol for sleep on it. I don't know if you can change this.

 

i use Fn+esc to go to sleep
after reading the commentaries, i think i'm going to relay more in sleeping too