Sunday, January 01, 2006

Understanding Sleep And Hibernate Power Settings On Your

By: Eve Larson

New computers come with two new power settings that may be
unfamiliar to many people. The settings known as "sleep" and
"hibernate" may sound fun and playful but can actually be
powerful tools to extend the life of your computer, give your
laptop a longer battery life, and waste less energy. Let's take
a look at how to get the most use out of these new settings.

Let's say you're going to lunch, a meeting, or going to run some
errands, but will be coming back to use your computer in a few
hours. You might want to turn your computer off so it doesn't
waste electricity, but your "computer guy" (or girl) told you
it's dangerous to turn your computer on and off all the time, so
what do you do? This would be a perfect time to use the "sleep
mode" on your computer. When you tell your computer to go to
sleep, it turns off the monitor, stops the disk drives and saves
its current state into memory. When you return, just touch your
mouse or keyboard and your computer quickly wakes up, and you're
exactly where you left off.

What if you're going to be away from your computer for a longer
period of time but will be coming back relatively soon? This is
when you should use the hibernate mode. Think of hibernate is a
deeper state of sleep. In hibernate mode your monitor is shut
off, hard disks are stopped and your state is saved. A major
difference between sleep and hibernate is power consumption. In
sleep mode your computer is in a very low power state, and can
wake up quickly. In hibernate mode your computer isn't using any
power so it takes longer to warm up.

Some other tips you should keep in mind are always save your
existing work before going into sleep or hibernate modes.
Occasionally the computer will fail to wake up and you will lose
any unsaved data. Laptop owners should also remember sleep uses
power and will eventually drain the battery.

© Copyright TabletPC.6LN.com, All Rights Reserved.

About the author:
Eve Larson writes news and computer tips for tablet pc's,
laptops and desktop computers on her website http://www.tabletpc.6ln.com , where you can read more tips or subscribe to her blog.

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