Hibernate or sleep mode???

Which do you prefer and what advantages does each have?

I would have thought that hibernate was better because it turns off the computer and saves battery except on my laptop the power button is defaulted to sleep so I would have thought that they would default it to that for a reason.

 

Resume time from hibernate will be greater than resume time from sleep. The more memory you have, the larger the time to return from hibernate will be.
Sleep is good if you're on a desktop, or if you're only moving your laptop for a short period of time.

I really never use sleep, and I've changed my laptop to ask what to do when you press the power button, and to hibernate when you press the sleep button.

 

I use sleep mostly because my computer is almost always plugged in and attached to an external display. It will resume from sleep almost instantly. I have it set to wake up when I touch the mouse or press a key.

I only use hibernate (or shut down) if I am going to move the laptop in a bag. It might wake up on sleep and overheat in a bag.

 

When i close my lid, my mac auto sleeps. So i usually use sleep.

 

I use hibernate because it doesn't drain the battery.

 

When I close the lid, my laptop is set to sleep. The power button is set to hibernate.

Gary

 

I have my laptop set to sleep when I close the lid. I also have it set to hibernate after it is in sleep mode for 30 minutes to save battery life. My power button hibernates the computer so I have quick access to it when I know I'm not going to use my laptop for an extended period.

You just have to find the right mix for the style of work you do on your laptop.

 

Sleep uses VERY little power. You can have a modern computer on sleep for days without problems.
While hibernate uses no power (except natural battery drain) when hibernated, it uses quite a bit before and after, first to save everything to disk, then when waking up to read it, delete it, re-generate caches and other housekeeping.
So for short sleeps, sleep drains less power.

There's also a third mode, hybrid sleep. It will do the hibernate saving, and then go to sleep instead of hibernate. The advantage is that if the power is lost (auto-shutoff after N hours), you can resume from hibernation, and otherwise resume from sleep. You buy the fastest possible startup time with slower shutdown times.

Personally, I use sleep, and a regular shutdown instead of hibernation when I want to shut down. When using ReadyBoost, there's a bug in hibernation that causes it to zap the readyboost cache upon every wakeup, with the net result that resume from hibernation takes longer than a normal boot.

 

Is that still true in SP2?

Gary

 

SP2 isn't out yet, so I wouldn't know.

Ironically, it's a fix for hibernation/readyboost in SP1 that causes the problem. The problem before that fix was that readyboost would be disabled after resuming, and instead of fixing it, they now just init the readyboost first thing after resuming.
The end result is that a regular boot is faster than resume from hibernation, because the regular boot can use the readyboost cache, while the resume has to fill it up...

 

Sleep: if I'm going to use my laptop again within 30 minutes.
Otherwise, I use hibernate most of the time.

I'd avoid hybrid sleep or auto hibernate after some minutes of sleep. I carry my laptop with me. I don't want my hard drive working while I'm on the go.

 

You are confused about hybrid sleep. In that mode, it creates the hibernation file and THEN goes to sleep. No fear of it starting up while in transit.

Gary