I was reading this article: Hibernate vs Standby

Okay, so now I know the difference, which should I use? Currently my lappie goes into Standby unless I shut it down.

I went thru the comments, but those are as divided as a PC v Mac showdown....

So, which do you use and what do you recommend?


 

I tend to use either one of them in place of turning off my laptop - so much easier to pick up where I left off, and a full reboot takes a while. I use standby if I'm going to be using it again shortly (e.g. when I want to pack up, go somewhere else, then resume), and hibernate for longer stretches.

I switch off. Or hibernate with my laptop.

I think hibernate scared me cos it didn't work particularly well on my old comp.

I guess I'm trying to get a sense that it's okay to use, and when it should be used too

Hibernation - as long as it works as it should.

"Per-user hibernation" would be awesome - instead of logging out or swithcing users, everything that the users have done something with on the RAM will be dumped to the harddrive, so that everything would be restored when logging in again.

But I guess that I'll have to create my own GNU/Linux distribution to do that...

Vista has a myriad of "I'm going away from the machine and want it in a different state in that period" options.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/11/21.html

This guy manages to amalgamate them done to 1 choice - "b'bye"

"When you click b'bye, the screen is locked and any RAM that hasn't already been copied out to disc is written. You can log back on, or anyone else can log on and get their own session, or you can unplug the whole computer."

Covers just about everything...

The whole set of choices is basically a tradeoff between whether your session in progress is saved, whether someone else can come along and use the computer, how quickly it resumes, and how much power it uses whilst you're away.

I want that on my PC! Why does everything from M$ have to cost that much? I guess that I'll have to do it myself for Linux, then... :'(

Well.. there are always ways and means of acquiring the latest from M$ without paying through the nose.... 

Why all the consternation about this?  Don't you just close the screen and it all automagically works?

I had a close screen setting which used to start up the comp the moment I opened it. After my reformat, I can't set it to that anymore

So now I've set it to hibernate when I close screen

I sometimes flip the lid closed in the general course of doing things. If it went into hibernation, or did anything other than turn the screen off really, it would annoy me no end.

I never close the lid unless I'm changing locations

Yeh, I only close the lid when going somewhere.  Why sleep a computer otherwise?  Just let the power saving stuff not suck down power.