Vista Sleep Mode

I have a question about sleep mode. Are there any cons to putting the laptop in sleep mode? And what is the difference between sleep and hibernate?

I know hibernate writes up to a few hundred MBs of data on the hard drive everytime it hibernates. However, I also know that it doesn't use battery power. Sleep mode does use battery power so my assumption is that instead of writing on the harddrive it just stores it in RAM.

Is this right? Thanks guys

 

Yes, you have it right. If you are going to turn on your computer within a short period of time then I would put it to sleep, but I would not use sleep in place of hibernate unless your laptop is plugged in. Hibernate can be used in place of shutting down so that the boot up is quicker and you can return to what you were doing before the hibernate. Also, don't leave your laptop unplugged with it in sleep mode for extended periods of time (few days) because this will fully discharge the battery and cause damage. Ask me how I know.

 

It depends on the period of time you're leaving that laptop for. Since PCs use the largest spike of power whilst starting up, a short break would call for sleep mode, as you would drain more battery shutting it down then booting it back up. The converse is also true.

 

Also, the distinction between sleep and hibernate gets even foggier with Vista's Hybrid Sleep. When activated (typically only on desktop systems since laptops have batteries) it not only puts the system to sleep but also saves a hibernation file at the same time. That way, if the power goes out, no work is lost, and if it doesn't go out you get the quick response times that sleep offers.

On laptops, something similar happens-If you leave your notebook in sleep for an extended period of time, or the battery reaches a critically low level of charge, Vista will automatically wake the system and perform Hibernation. Pretty clever if you ask me.