I already use S3 on my Media Centre PC, I just wanted clarification on Away.
I have done a lot of testing and research into here is clarification for anyone who is intersted (Sleep / Hibination / Away)
Sleep\Sleep After
Possible Setting : Time in minuets / Never (0)
If this setting has a value entered e.g. “5” the computer will copy the current system state into RAM and then sleep after “5” minutes of inactivity. Only a few Watts of power (6 to 7 watts on tests on my rig) are used in this mode as all that remains powered is the Ram and the monitoring of devices to bring it out of sleep e.g. Keyboard, mouse or USB ports in the event of a Media Centre remote.
When set to Never or 0 minutes the system drive will remain powered.
Footnotes:
Under windows Vista the behaviour of the timer has changed! Unlike in Windows XP, Vista’s sleep timer no longer queries generic services or applications, so these do not affect the countdown. However certain Vista aware drivers and applications can pause this timer.
Scenario 1: You are encoding an .avi file using a generic piece of software.
The system will go to sleep as Vista will ignore that the system is busy. However the application will resume/continue when the system wakes. (teted with Crunchie)
Scenario 2: You are using Windows Media Centre to record a TV Show.
The system will not enter sleep as the Media Centre driver will pause the counter.
Sleep\Hibernate after
Possible Setting : Time in minuets / Never (0)
Operates in a similar same way as “Sleep\Sleep After” however the computers state is written to Disk rather than to RAM.
Sleep\Allow hybrid sleep
Possible Setting : Yes/No
When this setting is set to “YES” when the computer is told to enter a “Sleep” state it will copy the systems state to both the computer hard drive and to the systems ram.
When this setting is set to “NO” when the computer is told to enter a “Sleep” state it will copy the systems state only to the systems RAM
Footnotes:
The advantage of having this set to “Yes” is if your computer goes to sleep and there is a power loss to the computer system. When the system is switched back on it will still be able to resume as the system will copy the version stored on disk back into RAM.
For this to work you do NOT need to have “Sleep\Hibernate after” enabled, just set a value in "Sleep\Hibernate after".
Hibinate as the only option is more usefull on laptops ETC as sleep still eats at power i.e battery where Hibinate uses 0 watts
Multimedia Settings\When Sharing media
Possible Settings: Allow computer to sleep
Prevent Idling to sleep
Allow the computer to enter away mode
Allow computer to sleep
Even if you have active remote users/devices connecting to the system it will drop into sleep acording to the rules for sleep. Remote devices cannot wake up the PC (Unless you use something like Wakeup on lan via a magic packet)
Prevent Idling to sleep
The sleep timer is paused indefinatly. However you can still put the system into and resume from sleep manually e.g. using MCE remote control.
Allow the computer to enter away mode
Away mode does in effect is mute audio and turn off the display etc. And after reading some delelopers notes it looks like you can develop device drivers to support this mode.
Hope this helps
