Microsoft Recommended..YOU VOTE

"Sleep is typically the best power-saving state to leave your mobile PC in when you're not using it. Shut down your mobile PC or put it into hibernation only when you must turn off the power (for example, when you want to add memory or you don’t plan to use the computer for several days)."

the above text is taken from winodws help.its recommending not to shut the system off even when we dont plan to use it for one full day and instaed using the standby.
Is it good for our laptop?even if im not using it for a day,isnt it better to shut it down?give out your ideas

 

I would agree. I only turn my computer off (actually shut it down) when I take it somewhere (Ie, I physically have to move it). Otherwise, since I use my computer everyday, in almost the same room every day, I always put it to sleep (Function, F4).

 

I shut off my laptop everday when I take it from home to office and other way around. I think that when not moving and / or installing new components, hibernation is the best option from a power saving standpoint. It all depends on how long the laptop will be shut down.

 

hibernation is no different from a full shutdown actually.
what is your suggestion for 24 hours?

 

I shut down my laptop every night before I go to bed and sometimes even multiple times during the day. I use sleep a lot as well since I do a lot of moving around and I can't spare to lose battery life when moving my laptop around in sleep mode.

Microsoft is fine and all but this is the same company that recommends 1GB for Vista. That's laughable.

Do whatever you feel fits your lifestyle.

 

I personally always hibernate at the end of a day for the night. My current logic is: if I need to stop using for a few hours, I use sleep. If I know I’m not using it for a night or more, I use hibernate. Unless the battery consumption is very low (much less than 1% for over 8 hours of sleep for example), then I do not see the advantage to sleep instead of hibernate (which offers most of the advantages of a full shut down but re-start faster).

Does anyone have statistics on battery usage if you leave your laptop in sleep mode for a night? I recall that it was several days with a full charge on my old Toshiba. From this, I assume that the ThinkPad is even more efficient such that it would not even drop of 1% over a night of sleep.

If the sleep mode does indeed consume very little energy, then I would be willing to convert to using the Vista new hybrid sleep mode. From what I recall, it behaves like hibernation initially, saving your RAM state to the HDD, but then, it goes to sleep instead of turning off the PC. So in the event, the RAM gets corrupted for some reasons, you can still re-start and it will re-load the RAM from the HDD as if you had used a normal hibernate.

Any precise data about the sleep mode battery consumption?

 

Can't Thinkpads do this "hybrid sleep mode"? I had impression that IBM software can do the same thing (Win XP). That it could write the hibernation file just before going to standby if instructed so in settings.

 

In all the years that I've been using Thinkpads (since 1996, so 12 years), I've always used Sleep. I rarely turn off, unless the machine is acting whaco or I need to make a hardware change or boot off a different drive/different OS. I realize it's probably a little harder on the battery, but guess what -- the battery has a finite lifespan anyway, regardless of how it is used. I've been able to get a couple of years worth of life out of all of my primary batteries, and I'm ok with that.

Windows takes so long to boot, especially once a decent amount of software is loaded... I just don't have the patience for Shutdown, and even Hibernate is somewhat painful.

Your mileage may vary, each to their own...

 

Regardless of the battery,are there any "hardware" advantages?i mean does this approach help to prolong the life of the hardware by not shutting down the system every time or everyday?

 

Well, if you are very meticulous on details, we could maybe say that any mode that puts the hardware completely off will make it easier on the hardware life. But the difference may be negligible. The difference is that your RAM doesn't need to be powered and refreshed 24 hours a day. By how much does that degrade the hardware with time, I could not say. IMO, this would be cutting hairs to think about this. All modes are pretty equivalent regarding hardware life.

The differences are more on the user practical side I think. Then the second concern is the battery discharge (if it is any non-negligible). I will try the sleep mode and see.

Thanks for the feedback LaptopGuru.

 

what diff does it make between shutting down ,Hibernating or going into sleep mode

 

Ok, well, I'm back at it this morning and the battery dropped 4%! That is for an 8 hours period. That is non-negligible to me. This could be a source of wear and tear on the battery long-term. I had taken care to put the laptop in extended battery mode so that the ultra bay isn’t powered (you can see this by the green LED on the ultra bay side)

This is not concluding to me so I still prefer hibernation for long periods (over night, etc).

 

Shutting down is turning off your computer completely and you have to go through the whole process of booting it up again. Of course, you need to save your work or else you'll lose it.

Hibernating will take everything you were doing and put it into a place on your HDD and then shut it down, but when you boot it up it'll take a lot less time then booting up normally because it'll just have to retrieve everything from where it put it.

Sleep mode is putting everything into RAM, turning off the monitor, and putting the computer into a very low power state because the RAM needs a little power to sustain the information of sleep mode. Waking from sleep mode is the fastest of the three but you also slowly lose battery life if you keep it on battery.

Hope that helps.