And why?
My options are Sleep, Hibernate and Shut Down.
Usually Standby is used for other electronics like stereos. Standby will keep some power running to the clock and memory, while ‘turning off’ removes all power. You’ll have to give us some more details as to what you are turning off and what your goals are for that action. You might want this thread to change forums, too.
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To IMHO.
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Laptop, for longer periods of time (say, overnight).
Turn off - when connected to a breakered power strip you have SOME protection against surges/lightning strikes. Left ‘on’ somehow (sleep, hibernate, etc…) no protection.
If you’ve got a really slow boot and you need your computer to be instantly responsive, put it in sleep. Otherwise, shut it down.
I’m lazy and never turn off my computer. I just turn off the monitor at night when I go to sleep. Yeah it wastes power but apparently not very much, because my electrical bills are very reasonable. And living in SoCal I don’t think I’ve ever even seen lightning, so not too worried about lightning strikes (it’s plugged into a surge protector anyway but I never realized this wouldn’t help if the power is on - is that accurate?)
At Casa De Taco, I keep my desktop PC and macbook pro both on all the time.
I use hibernate because Vista takes so damn long to boot. It can’t use too much power, since it doesn’t need to recharge the battery even after being in hibernate for hours while disconnected from power. That’s one thing I prefer over XP.
I’m pretty sure hibernation mode doesn’t use any power at all. It just saves the current memory onto the hard drive and then shuts down the computer, making it quicker (theoretically) to boot up next time. I thought XP did the same thing?
Does anybody have any data on how much power is used by an idling CPU with the monitor turned off? I’d prefer to leave my computers on constantly, like some others here, but my wife will throw a fit over wasted power. I’m not entirely sure intensive CPU use during boot up and shut down every few hours is saving power over letting the CPU idle for those same few hours. Does it save a significant amount of power to turn your computer off when you aren’t using it?
I put my computer into sleep mode, both because it’s faster to get it back up and running and because I have a special key on my keyboard that makes it convenient to do. I’m running XP, so I’m not really sure which version of sleep / standby / hibernate / cryofreeze / naptime it’s really going into.
It could be a hardware issue rather than an OS one–one of the things I like about Vista is how fast my boot is (maybe 30 seconds).
MacBook Pro. I turn it off so that it doesn’t stay hot for so long. I also get more done if I don’t have the computer ready to surf at all times.
The main reason people leave computers on is to fool people into thinking they are still at work after they’ve gone home. I had one boss that set every new-hire’s screen saver to say “Gone home early”.
Yes, it’s exactly the same in XP in terms of saving current operations. For my computer the advantage isn’t in boot time difference, but avoiding program and document load times. For absolutely no power to be used it also requires switching off at the wall.
Yes it does. Flick the switch, save a polar bear, and make your wife happy. It might be relatively cheap in dollar terms, but that shouldn’t be licence to waste it.
Idle represents 69 to 97% of total annual energy use, even if power management is enabled. (lists power consumption measured on various processors and operating conditions c. 2/3rds of the down).
ETA: the above link also provides easy methods for reducing CPU wastage whilst idle, which took me all of about 30 seconds to implement. Don’t not do it.
I can only speak for Microsoft OSs.
Shut down and turn off does exactly that: all processes shut down and the computer turns itself off. No power is consumed until the computer is turned back on. The next time you turn the PC on, it will do a full boot sequence.
Sleep mode keeps power to the memory, turns off the disk and many other peripherals, and the processor is put into a power-saving state. This is useful if you’re leaving your PC for a short period of time.
Hibernate, the option you likely want, is where the computer saves the system state to a file (hiberfil.sys), then turns itself off. No power is consumed until the computer is turned back on. At an early stage of the boot process, the computer detects that the computer was set to hibernate, reads the file, and sets you up exactly as you were. This is very much faster than a full boot sequence.
I sleep all my Macs.
My goal is to reboot as rarely as possible - I actually have one machine (our kitchen computer) that has gone 2 1/2 years without a reboot. My G5 Quad is on a huge UPS, so I don’t worry about power failures or surges - it’s just too convenient to be able to walk over to it and be working in 10 seconds.
Shut off, every night. The pretty blue light on my desktop keeps me awake, and my laptop is only on when I use it.
Really? It took a long time to boot from day one, and long boot times are a common complaint about Vista. Not an issue with hibernate.