Sleep or Shut down?

Inazuma · 4 Mar 2008 at 21:16

I recently installed Vista 64, and after accidentally pressing Sleep instead of Shut Down a few times, I have to say I'm pretty impressed with the feature as it actually does it very well. I'm wondering, does anyone here always leave there Pc on sleep rather than shut down? Do you think it's safe in the long term? (ie. going weeks without shutting down).

buy_my_cookies · 4 Mar 2008 at 21:20

its got to be wasting electricity! save the planet shut down hehe,

sorry for the silly remark, but i just read your post, im on xp fort i'd see if it was on here but tried "stand by" and my comp crashed oh dear!!!

LeperousDust · 4 Mar 2008 at 21:44

Sleep is good if you want boot times to a minimum, but i think its still good to shut down once in a while (or a restart) to just clean everything out. My laptop is faster after i've shut it down, compared to it being on constantly (or sleeping) throughout the week.

sepulchre · 4 Mar 2008 at 22:02

I use the sleep function in vista and find it to be really very good, when the PC is asleep there is no way i can tell the difference between asleep and off so power usage must be minimal. I do tend to do a restart once every couple of weeks though to clear out the rubbish.

Uhtred · 4 Mar 2008 at 22:08

i always use sleep. no reason not to

swinnie · 4 Mar 2008 at 22:10

Zap said:
i always use sleep. no reason not to

Save money!

Marky · 4 Mar 2008 at 22:14

Does anyone know the actual amount of power that is used whilst in sleep? If it's still quite a bit I wouldn't bother... I'd rather wait a few more seconds for it to boot properly than waste money on extra electricity...

Inazuma · 4 Mar 2008 at 22:18

I normally would shut down without question, but I have to go through some hassle to open certain programs after every time I boot, so using Sleep would save me that hassle.

buy_my_cookies · 4 Mar 2008 at 22:26

after looking aroundi have seen a few people say that leaving a laptop on sleep all day has only taken 1-2% of battery power so it cant be much at all

jellybeard999 · 4 Mar 2008 at 23:12

I think sleep just suspends everything in the RAM, not sure if the cpu is used as well ?

sepulchre · 4 Mar 2008 at 23:23

I don't think the CPU can be sued, all my fans spin down so the PC looks no different to if it were actually off, I'd be interested to know exactly what its doing though

ins0mn1ac · 4 Mar 2008 at 23:24

RAM is volatile so I assume its the only thing with any power in it while in sleep mode, I use it, much faster than waiting for a full boot!

lokkers · 5 Mar 2008 at 07:47

I use hibernate - best of both worlds I think

Baz · 5 Mar 2008 at 08:26

lokkers said:
I use hibernate - best of both worlds I think

Exactly!

I rarely restart my work laptop, only when updates force it to. Much quicker to hibernate!

bledd · 5 Mar 2008 at 08:41

i'll pickup my power meter thing on the weekend and test the difference between pc off, pc sleep, pc on

Uhtred · 5 Mar 2008 at 08:42

swinnie said:
Save money!

Standby uses very little power and it's so much quicker. Also, if you use the hybrid option it means that even if the power fails your computer won't lose its data