What's
the difference between Sleep, Standby, and
Hibernate?
Standby
puts your computer into energy-saving
mode, where it uses very little power.
Hibernate
saves your workspace (all your open
windows), then turns the computer
off.
The difference is that hibernate saves
more energy because the computer goes off
completely, but it takes longer for the
computer to wake up from hibernation, so
it's not as convenient.
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Standby
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Hibernate
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Energy Use
|
1-6 watts
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0 watts
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Time to sleep/wake
up
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a few seconds
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30 secs. to 3
minutes
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Sleep is
more complicated, because it means
different things on different
computers.
- Mac OS, desktop. Sleep is
the same as Standby. There is no
built-in way to Hibernate.
- Mac OS, laptop. Sleep
initially means Standby, but if the
battery level drops very low then the
laptop automatically Hibernates. See
below for more on this.
- Windows Vista. Sleep
initially means Standby, but it
switches to Hibernate if the battery
level drops too low (laptop) or the
computer has been sleeping for more
than three hours (both desktops &
laptops).You can change the 3-hour
period to something else in Settings
> Power Options.
- Windows XP. ???
Hibernate on
Windows Vista
As mentioned
above, Hibernate happens automatically in
Windows Vista for both laptops and
desktops after the computer has been
sleeping for a while. Laptop users can
skip to the chase and just choose
Hibernate manually. That option isn't
available to desktop users by default, but
this article shows how
to enable Hibernate for desktop
computers. It's also helpful if the
Hibernate option has disappeared from your
laptop for some reason.
Hibernate on Mac
OS ("Safe Sleep")
Apple calls
Hibernation "Safe Sleep". That's what
I'll call it too for the rest of this
article.
Apple
doesn't see fit to let the user choose
Safe Sleep on their computers. Safe
Sleep happens on laptops only if it's
sleeping and the battery level drops too
low, and even then only on PowerBooks made
after October 2005. You can override that
behavior and get your computer to Safe
Sleep immediately on command.
(Trivia:
Apple used to let users choose
Safe Sleep. On the old clamshell iBooks,
circa 2000-01, running Mac OS 9, there was
an option called "Preserve memory contents
on sleep".)
Related articles
I just wrote this
article and there are bound to be a few
bugs in it.
If you spot any errors
or missing info, please let
me
know.
Last update: March
2008
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