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remember, when you do that sleep state the memory doesn’t get refreshed so any leftovers aren’t recycled (reused). i’d rather start fresh from a cold start.

besides, if you really want to get back to your work that fast just use screensaver.

Is this function extended to XP also?

@rino mardo

You will still have your occasional reboot to install various updates, but for the most part Vista, and XP for that matter, are ridiculously reliable from an always on point of view. Rebooting is so Windows 98… the sleep and hybrid sleep functions in Vista are by far the best of any OS I’ve tried.

Does Sleep in Vista means Hibernate in XP?

Vijayenda - No, sleep is different than hibernate.
Sleep uses power while hibernate not. ;)

Does sleep mode ,damage any part of laptop computer while we move from place to place?!

Don’t let them kid you; Vista sleep mode uses a lot of power! This is particularly true for notebooks running on battery pawer. Sleep mode drains my battery in less than an hour. As nearly as I can determine, sleep mode simply blanks the screen and spins down the drive.

@David: You have something setup wrong (or are not using “Sleep”)… I use sleep on my Dell Vostro 1500 laptop everyday and it does not drain the battery that much (I have put it to sleep before leaving work on Friday afternoon, then not touched it until waking it up on Monday morning and my power will have dropped from 100% down to about 95% or so… The only time I power off my laptop now is when I need to boot into another OS to test a piece of software.
Daniel

@David: There are two types of sleep mode: S1 and S3. S3, true sleep mode, can’t drain a laptop’s batteries in an hour. In fact, the current draw during S3 is nearly imperceptible on many modern machines. S1, on the other hand, does essentially what you described happening. You can check your BIOS settings to find out which mode your computer is using.

Don’t bother using sleep mode if you have an original Logitech G15 USB keyboard - unless you don’t need to use it on wakeup because it won’t work again until a reboot. :(

I don’t use sleep because I always lose my wireless network and have to disable and re-enable the network adapter to get it to reconnect properly.

Before you say things aren’t working for you check your power settings and ensure that they are correct (you can find plenty of articles on power settings through a simple web search of “vista power settings”).

Sleep: The system is still on but only in enough capacity to maintain system state. It is like hitting pause on a movie, things don’t change but the movie is still ready to play. This uses power and on a 6cell battery about 50+ hours of sleep should be possible.

Hibernate: takes the data in memory and puts it on the hard drive before totally powering off the system. this means when windows starts up again it checks to see if it has this data and rather then going through a normal start up moves the data from the hard drive back to memory which also means any programs you had open will be open to their previous state (with some exceptions that are program dependent such as streaming youtube, you’d need to refresh the page or hit play again)

Hybrid Sleep: this plays partly with your power settings. you will be in sleep mode for a certain amount of time, if that time gets to say 20min then the system will go into hibernate to save more power. This is how your battery is staying at 95% (is my guess)

Restarting: you should restart at least once a week, your hard drive wants it. If you want to know more look up “dead hard drive sectors and restarting”. Basically your hard drive needs a restart to do its self checks (this is a hardware thing not an OS thing).

Screen saver: This is not a way to save power, it is going to use the same amount of power as leaving the computer idle. however your power settings can cause screen saver to change to sleep or hibernate mode based on how long you are in Screen saver.

A note about XP: Personally, I have not had very good luck using sleep or hibernate on XP (sp2 or sp3), It just causes little errors and I end up restarting to fix them. Short story, 3 sleep/hibernates and then restart or you will see XP fail. Vista however, I <3 vista hibernate.

And as a last note. Please don’t give technical advice if you don’t know what you are talking about.

A quick note about Sleep on some 64-Bit Vista builds.

Since some vendors including the motherboard king ASUS have been lazy about writing code to handle alternate power states such as Sleep and Hibernate, you may find that Vista will Blue Screen when you wake it up. This was a big problem for me when I first installed 64-bit Vista but it has gotten better.

It seems that 64-bit support is still a low priority for most hardware vendors. This is a shame because overall 64-bit is much better.

@Peter, Would the bios sleep mode settings play a part in the wake up behavior seen by posting #10 Lou and #11 WarePhreak? my knowledge gets fuzzy at the network standards so i’m not sure where WarePhreak’s issue might be, my thought is a router setting. I know i have to wait a little while for my network to auto-detect again, @WarePhreak you may be acting to quickly, if you wait say 2min and it still does not connect then you really have an issue.

Has anyone had problems with their laptops overheating while in sleep mode? My sister’s ends up with a bios message saying the cpu overheated if I put it to sleep and then put it in a laptop bag.

@H. Amburgler could be happening because the cpu is hot before going into sleep, and the cooling fan will power off for sleep mode. Then putting it in a bag is insulating the laptop so you arn’t getting any ambient cooling. In addition your ram is still opperating and so it the northbridge to keep the information in ram (maybe the southbridge is doing it, in either case, you have enough power to generate heat).

You may be able to solve the problem by blowing some compressed air in every nook and cranny to make sure you don’t have any dust keeping heat in, other then that try waiting a min after going into sleep before putting the laptop in the bag so it has a chance to dissipate heat.

I use Vista on my Macbook, how can I tell from within the OS if it’s using S1 or S3 sleep modes?

@Jack:
There’s a good chance that what Lou and WarePhreak are experiencing is a result of using S3. S3 is known to be less compatible with device drivers. If your computer came with the component, then there shouldn’t be any problems. But chances are that Lou’s Logitech keyboard drivers can’t properly handle the way that his motherboard signals to wake up. I experienced this problem with a video card myself. Lou, you could probably solve the issue by changing to S1, if you’re willing to give up the power savings of S3. I suggest trying S1, and if that solves the problem, bugging Logitech to fix their driver so it works with S3.

@Jason O’Halloran:
I’m not familiar with Macbooks, and I couldn’t dig out anything on Google, sorry. Try this: In Vista, go to Control Panel -> System and Maintenance -> Power Options. Click “Change Plan Settings” under the selected plan, then Change Advanced Power Settings -> Advanced Settings tab. Open the Sleep -> Allow Hybrid Sleep option in the list below. If Hybrid Sleep is on, or you can turn it on, you are probably using S3.

@Peter:
Thanks for the info.

Does Sleep decreases the Battery life ?
My battery damaged because i kept my pc only on hibernation for 1 year :(

@Make money:
As far as I know, sleep doesn’t affect the battery life.

Batteries wear down naturally over time and use, though they should definitely last more than a year. There are power settings that can help improve your battery’s life, such as setting it not to charge until it’s down to 90-95%. Constant charging can wear down your battery. If your battery is still covered under warranty, it might be replaceable.

Also, when you say that you kept your PC on hibernation for a year, did you ever restart it? There are many things that can go wrong with a laptop if it’s not restarted periodically. It shouldn’t theoretically affect the battery, though.