better to shutdown, sleep or hybernate your comp

whats better for your comp and why. do you shut down, sleep or hybernate your laptop.

i usually sleep it always. ihardly ever hybernate cause whats really the point, might as well save and shutdown.

whats the best way to treat a laptop

 

well, thats the point. you don't need to save and shutdown? it's the same as sleep actually, just without using power. so if you "sleep for a long time", just hibernate.

it depends a bit on how long it takes (and that depends on the amount of ram you have and the disk performance). but i prefer hibernate all the time. no need to "stop the task you're on" just to turn the laptop off.

 

I almost always either put my laptop to sleep or leave it running when I'm not using it. I hardly ever shut it down - I usually only do it when an update requires it.

 

no actually cause youd be wasting memory first of all, and it will fragment your drive over time.

 

I put my laptop to sleep. If the computer detects that it's sleeping for more than a hours, it'll wake itself up and hibernate itself. Best of both world.

 

no, and, no.

actually, if you ment diskspace, then call it diskspace. memory is commonly the thing called RAM.

and no, it doesn't fragment at all. that's why it has a ram-size-fitting file on the hdd right from the start of the os installation.

 

I use hibernate 90% of the time........ot shut down......

never was a fun of teh sl33p function

 

uh. memory = storage of data. but again uh right. whatever you say boss.

 

no, memory = ram. the other thing is hdd. we have different storage pools and have to differenciate between them.

else, people get irritated by your statement, which you don't want.

and stop calling me boss

 

HDD = NVM = non-voltatile memory, RAM = random access memory.

jury what say you

 

yes, both are memory. still both are different storage pools.

and if you say "memory", you normally mean ram. that's a pc/notebook hw term for it.

i don't say "i've added some memory to my notebook" when i bought a bigger harddrive. no-one here would. that's why i tried to note this to you.

 

My laptop is on 24/7 whilst it's on my desk. I usually put it to sleep if I'm taking it to class or whatever. I only use hibernate if my battery dies. The only time I shutdown is to do a reboot, to install updates or software etc.

It's been slept for probably an hour total during that period, and hibernated once for a few hours when my battery died whilst out and about.

 

lol @ useroflaptops

seriously?

 

So let me put the question to YOU. If you use "memory" to interchangeably refer to a hard drive or RAM, how would folks ever know which one you are talking about? If you take your computer to the shop and ask for an additional one gig of memory, would you expect more RAM or a bigger hard drive?

This issue has been around for a VERY long time, dating back to the late 1970's when hard drives first became available to PC users. And the commonly accepted usage has, for MANY years, been "memory" refers to RAM and "disk space" refers to hard disk storage. Buck the trend all you want, but you are swimming upstream, because the jury has been in on this argument for a VERY VERY long time.

Gary

 

Why not just call it hdd and ram instead of disk space and memory? Problem solved.

 

I use sleep or shutdown.

Hibernate is a waste of hard drive space and resources IMHO. Why waste 4GB of hard drive space, when it takes just as long if not longer to resume from hibernate than just boot up. Unless you have tons of apps open that you don't want to open up again. I have never had luck with hibernate anyhow. Always seems sluggish, and have to reboot anyhow.

 

I just close the lid and have it set to do nothing.

 

Ever heard of Energy Saving?

 

that was different in xp days with 1gb ram or so. then it was much faster than booting. but the "i continue later, close" is great once you get used to (and do real work that continues for a while). never had slugishness issues, en contraire esp. xp was much faster at full performance than on cold boot.

 

ever heard of green energy? Here it's 100% hydro-electricity so you can use as much as you want without huge impact on the environment. Heck we even have too much electricity here that we sell them to us. electrity is like 3-5c/kilowatt here or something.LOL

ignore what i said above

 

"No impact on the environment" - really? Last I heard, hydro-electric requires these little objects called dams, and those - please correct me if I'm wrong - put one heck of a dent in the local ecology.

On top of which, the more electricity you use, the more unrecoverable waste heat you generate, thereby contributing to the acceleration of the Universe's ultimate heat-death.

 

didn't I say "no Huge impact on the environment"?
BTW.. where I live, we're experiencing a cold-death, the reverse of global warming. LOL I dont' know why, but our average temperature is declining. We hit record snowfall...etc..

 

First, dams can be extremely damaging to the environment. Second, one year of weather data does not constitute a trend. And third, this is getting rapidly off topic, so if you want to continue this conversation, feel free to create a thread in OT. Meanwhile, let's get back to talking about shutdown, hibernation, and sleep. Thanks.

 

You can find some info here http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/Help/335c6a5d-0304-4af1-b135-6bf6c124dc111033.mspx

 

I make good use of the power whilst it's on, don't worry about that.

I could do the same thing with my old desktop, but my laptop uses much less power.

 

Lately I've been using almost exclusively Hibernate. It's usually quicker than Shutdown/Restart, and when it isn't, it's because I'm in the middle of something and have lots of programs up that I'd just have to restart (taking even longer) if I were to restart. But Shutdown would come in second. I almost never use Standby, as I don't really want my computer sucking power when it's "off", only to find it doesn't have much of a charge left later. I actually have Standby disabled entirely (via a third-party program) most of the time.

 

standby is the way to go.

 

Standby is the way to if you're only AFK for a while. If you're leaving your computer standby for a long time, it'll waste electricity.

The best way I see is to set the advanced power configuration to sleep, tell it to wake up, go into hibernation after 15 minutes. If you have a schedule for everything, ie wake up in the morning to check mail, setup a scheduled task to wake your computer from hibernation automatically. That way you have 0 wait time, you dont even have to press the power button.

 

I agree, adjusting the advanced power settings and scheduled tasks to your needs is the way to go. I think I have my computer set to sleep after 30 min and hibernate after 60 because I'm often switching back between my computer and schoolwork/food/whatever and don't want to have to wake it up all the time.

 

Hmmm, interesting:

I beg to differ. While sleep does use little energy, it has to have enough to basically keep the memory charged, correct? And if I do put my laptop to sleep I am usually surprised at how much the battery HAS drained.

 

So the PC can automatically boot up from hibernate?

 

In the Task Scheduler you can set a task to wake up the computer to run, but I'm not sure if you can make a task that would just wake up the computer. I suppose it's possible, but I'm not sure. I'd have to check later when I get home.

 

No... but it can automatically wake up from hibernate. I do that all time with scheduled task. IE. Defrag/optimize/backup at night automatically without me doing anything. Everything is 100% automatic without my help.

And.. the "you beg to differ part of your post", Ram probably use around 1-2Whr of energy. If your battery is rated at 56Whr, then it'll last between 56-112hrs if the circuit is 100% efficient. 1-2W is about right for the energy use of a night light.

Also,, when the battery is critically low during sleep or standby, the laptop will wake itself up and hibernate/shutdown depending on your settings in the advanced power mangement section.

 

I saw somewhere in the MS website that sleep drains 1-2% of battery power per hour.

 

ok, first off, i agree ram and hdd for terminology,

Next, environmentalism. This isnt the greenpeace forum. i dont care about ecology or being green when i surf these forums. i am here for COMPUTER information and discussion. on task, people.

Third, i hibernate. that way i can uplug, pack up and go, and re plug in when i get to destination, without having to keep opening and closing stuff all the time. i am highly mobile. my personal and professional life necessitate it, and hibernate helps with that. personal preferrence. That, and it does seem to save a lot of battery life over sleep for obvious reasons.


ev

 

This has already been left in the dust last page. Thanks for bringing it up again though

 

is excessive restarting and on/offing your laptop bad for it in anyway. Is there negative consequences for leaving the laptop on without restart for months on end.

this is what I do. my os can easily not have restarted or shutdown for a few months. its been fine, but if one were to get a new lappy then better care should be taken henceforth

 

How can your computer not have restarted in months? Do you not have automatic updates on? You must not be running Vista SP2 either since that only recently came out.

 

i dont mean right now. recently there have been many restart. no in general i can leave it there for months on end without restarting. i certainly never shutdown. not in the literal sense

 

This is going to sound like a stupid question but how do you guys schedule tasks that wake the computer up when you're logged off?

Say for example I want to run Defrag at 3am. Does the PC wake up at 3am, log into my account with my password and run defrag, and then log me out at the end?

 

One way is by setting the computer to go into hibernation rather than a full shut-down; under that scenario, Windows is still "going" and can be used to fire the computer back up again at a specified time - the logged on account would then still be logged on. This PCWorld article discusses the topic.

If you have Wake on LAN capacity, you could also set up another computer to fire off the necessary magic packet to wake your system, and then have a task scheduled to run at start. In that case, you wouldn't necessarily need to have a user account log on, as many functions can run under the built-in services or system account (e.g., if you scheduled a defrag, it would probably run under the system account instead of requiring a user account to be logged on).

Lastly, if your BIOS is sophisticated enough, there might be a wake capability in your BIOS setup (my supposition is that this would work more or less like Wake on LAN).

 

Thanks Shyster1 for the link and info.

I'm going to have to read up a bit more on this. It's a standalone system running 7 RC right now and no users remain logged on, so I'm trying to find a way to setup a task (in task manager) that would run either without being logged in or one that can log in an admin user on its own.

 

That can be done. I know that Apache can be installed on a Windows system so that it runs as a service (as opposed to running as an instance - I'm just guessing terminology here since it's so late - within a logged on user account), so it's definitely doable.