Sleep or shutdown?

My laptop is in my sig.

Here is my daily pattern of usage. I wake up, and use the laptop for a bit. Between 9/10 and lunchtime, I shut it off. I turn it on again at lunchtime for about an hour or so, then turn it off. I then turn it back on again at night, from about 8 or so onwards. Around midnight, I turn it off and then go to bed.

What I want to know is this. Which is 'better' for my laptop. Turning it on in the morning, and then putting it in sleep mode whenever I put it away, and only shut it off when I go to bed for the night, or the way I'm doing it now, with regular shut downs and boot-ups every couple of hours or so?

 

try to hibernate it will mean you dont have to stop any programs it all saves to the HDD i think its control that you press on the turn off menu to get it but you have to enable it in system properties

 

When you keep shutting it down, that's more wear and tear on your components . I just use hibernate on mine and reboot once a week or more.

 

Okay. So what you guys are saying is I shouldn't shut it down, but just put it sleep whenever I'm done with it, unless I'm going to be away from it for a long period ie. days, then I should shut it down?

I do like how quick it boots up when I put it on sleep, and also how I can leave my web browser and game and everything else exactly as it is, and then come back to it later.

What about the long term affect on battery life and performance though? I have the AC constantly plugged in, and have been informed in this thread that once the battery is fully charged, the AC is no longer sending charge to the battery and 'burning' it. But what if I have the laptop on sleep for long periods? Any affect on the long term battery life and performance then?

 

Unless thunderstorms are imminent, then I unplug it. I have seen little effect on my battery wear or performance in the year and a half that I've owned it.

 

I'd shut it down 9 times out of 10. I agree with blondie about unplugging if thunderstorm immenent but I'm against hibernation as it takes up so much hard disk space.

 

Well I had 160GB to begin with (well, 134GB - Vista is a hungry mo'fo!), and about 35GB left, with almost all the stuff I ever wanted in the first place happily installed, so I'm not really worried about storage at all.

 

even with hibernation taking HDD space it only needs 896 MBs or around that if you dont use all of your hard drive ever than use it or if you have a very big HDD

 

This may sound like a stupid question, but what's the difference between Sleep, Stand by and Hibernate? As I said, my laptop is in my sig, and the two top left buttons on my keyboard are Stand by (Esc) and Hibernate (F1). Furthermore, there's an option to put the laptop into Sleep mode in the Start menu. So, what's the difference between them, and given the usage patterns I outlined in the OP, which one is best for my cirumstances and why?

 

I'd use Standby,

Standby stores everything you were doing in RAM but turns off all unnecessary stuff (like hard drives, screen, etc) so you go back to where you where (but it uses power to keep the RAM with your stuff in)

Hibernate does the same thing, but stores the RAM off to the hard drive, uses 0 power, and then restores the RAM from the hard drive when you turn back on.

Not sure what Sleep mode is, I'd use Standby personally (if I was you)

 

I believe Sleep/Standby are the same thing. Basically you just need to decide whether you can stand a little bit of power loss over time (standby) or whether you want it to be completely off (hibernate). Obviously it takes longer to recover from hibernate, but at the same time no power is used. Usually hibernate is better especially if you're relying on the battery, but standby should be fine in between short breaks, especially if plugged in.

 

Cheers guys. I think I'll go with standby because I usually have the AC plugged in, it boots up quicker and I don't usually leave it off for too long (4-5 hours average between sessions). Maybe hibernate overnight or full shutdown?