Better to sleep or hibernate laptop overnight?

Which is preferred for Vista for your laptop when you go to sleep at night? What about for shorter periods, such as waiting in between classes? (from 10 minutes to an hour)

Right now, I hibernate for long periods 1 hour+, and sleep for anything 1 hour or less, but I'm not sure what would be best.

 

Why not switch off the laptop and switch it on when you need to? Start up times can't be that slow.

 

I believe it's better for your system to Hibernate, but it's so much more convenient just to use Sleep. I never use Hibernate, I Sleep overnight and just shut down for anything longer than 24 hours. Though I haven't come across one of those longer than 24 hours for a long time now

 

Sleep is not "off" but if your computer somehow shuts down for whatever reason it CAN act as it. It's like a hybrid mode (It saves all the information like Hibernate)

Hibernate on the other hand uses no power, and I frequently use it overnight.

 

I hibernate now. "Sleeping" for days broke the blue power LED on my HP desktop due to the blinking.

 

On battery if I always choose the hibernate option. I always shut down my laptop before going to bed. It takes only about a minute to start up, and my laptop wakes up from hibernate within 5-10 seconds, sleep mode...instantly.

I dont see any point in doing anything other than shutting down your laptop if you are not going to use it for 8+ hours. For everything else, use hibernate mode.

 

So is it ever better to sleep than to hibernate?

Also, if hibernate starts up faster and saves your stuff, why would you shut down over hibernate? I mean I shut down once every 3 days or so, so it doesn't become laggy, but why shut down completely, if hibernate is essentially the same, but better?

 

So updates can run and whatnot.

 

Sometimes you need to halt the system to allow a patch to be applied, so I shut down once a month (patch tuesday).

 

I meant those that shut down every night. I shut down 1-2 times a week for updates as well.

And is it better to sleep your laptop between classes or should I hibernate so the battery doesn't drain?

 

I don't find the battery drain under sleep mode too noticeable for day to day use. If you put the thing to sleep for an hour or so it really won't take up much power. If you have it sleep for a day maybe you'll start to notice some drain, but other than that...

 

I sleep it all the time.
Takes too long for hibernate since I have 2GB ram and shutting down and booting up is even more slower

 

i always thought sleep would drain the battery real quick?

might do a few tests when the new lappie comes through.

 

if you close your laptop is that going to hiernate or sleep

 

You can set that in power options in your control panel.

 

Actually, I think sleep is often more power-efficient than hibernate. With hibernate, PC writes all information on HDD, and then read it from HDD again, which is power intensive. Unless you have awful lots of time between classes, IMO sleep is better for battery.

 

But not everyone is a laptop-toting student. I hibernate at the end of every computer session, it takes like 3 seconds to write 512MB. Then it takes only 10 seconds from the power button to the desktop, so hibernate is great.

 

One problem with that. Sleep is actually Hybrid Sleep. It does the same thing as Hibernate but leaves it in a low power state

 

I normally put my computer into Sleep at night (I love Sleep, it gets in and out of it so quickly and seamlessly), but the LED light is constantly blinking all night. I wonder if that will make it go out soon? Do you guys think it will cut life of it significantly?

 

I take it sleep is the same as stand-by?

 

In XP and 2000, yes. And W98 standby....well was just buggy

I explained how it is in Vista two posts up.

 

My HP Pavilion a255c's power LED pooped out after days of standby.

 

Wow, not good. I wouldn't want my LED light going out. I put it into hibernate last night. Oh well, I'd rather have it on sleep but I don't want the light going out.

 

Half a year in standby over nights, and my 2 amber lights that blink hasn't gone out yet
Too bad for you. You got some cheap led's

 

I'd like to add something else:

I use a wireless (USB receiever) mouse, and for the longest time, it had a one week battery life with two AA cells. I finally realized that the mouse (Logitech MX610) would only turn off if the computer was turned off. Stand-by would leave the mouse on, draining the batteries. Now, i've had the same batteries for a few weeks.

 

wow...I've never considered anything other than shutting down if I'm going to sleep.

For shorter periods, I just close the lid. I don't know what it does, it shuts down everything until I touch a key and everything goes back up exactly as I left it.

 

I only sleep. When I hibernate it resets certain things that only resent when I power down my computer, as where with sleep, it is seamless from use to use. Also in hybernate, something sometimes powers up my computer and the video card then puts off heat! Which isn't good when the lid is down.

Yes the LED's get used more, but unless they are lemons, the LED's should outlast the lifetime of the computer.