Shut down or hibernate, don't just stand by your computer
Jun 9, 2009 11:03HP sent me a little book, Green IT for Dummies. So, the brand thinks I'm a dummy now, huh?
Just kidding! I appreciate the publication (not an e-book?) and will read it tonight. Along with it came an article that encourages us to "Shut Down" our computers at the end of each day. Do you know that if you turn off your PC for the night, you can save up to 26.8 watts of energy*? Do this for 365 days a year and you will save 9.782 kilowatts for the planet.
Well, that reminds me of something. I hardly ever shut down my PC. I usually hibernate the system instead. I've checked online forums and some claim that the PC still uses electricity when in hibernation, while others say otherwise.
Last night, I put this to the test. After hibernating my laptop, I pulled out the power cord and removed the battery. This morning, I was able to un-hibernate it as usual. I guess this means that like Shut Down, Hibernate doesn't use any electricity.
Hibernate is different from Stand By which cuts power to hardware components you are not using but maintains power to your computer's memory.
I'm sure you know how to shut down your PC but you may not know how to hibernate it. You will need to enable hibernation by changing the Power Options in your Control Panel.
Then click on "Turn Off Computer" in the Start Tab as usual. You should come to this screen.
Hold down the Shift Key and watch "Stand By" change to "Hibernate".
Click on the orange Hibernate icon and your system will start saving an image of your desktop with all open files and documents. When done, it will completely power down your computer. You can un-hibernate by starting up the same way you would after shutting down. You will go back to exactly where you were before hibernating--with all the open files and documents as they were.
So, either hibernate or shut down to save energy. Don't just leave your computer on standby mode. If you are using a laptop, your laptop battery will last longer, too.
*If you'd like to track how much energy you are not using, you can download a widget here.
- Talkback
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Good point for PCs. A lot of people don't really do this for PCs because they feel that they have a need to conserve every bit of power like a laptop running on batteries. But for laptop users. I'm really surprised that a lot of my tech-savvy colleagues don't know about hibernation and go for the full on shutdown process each time they're done with work on their laptops. Hibernated definitely speeds up the process (unless you've got like 8GBs of RAM installed). Even more surprising is that people put their laptops on standby and shove it into their bags/cases. You can almost hear the life of the laptop and battery slowly trickle away as the heat builds up in that bag. Personally, I use hibernate so often that programs start freezing coming out of hibernation the 1xx time in a row. Occasional restarts/shutdowns are good for a fresh start.
Jun 09, 2009 11:11
Some PCs go to hibernation automatically after a preset period in standby. This is certainly the case on a HP 2140 netbook running XP.
Jun 09, 2009 11:29
Thanks for the information. I didn't know you could make desktop PC go into hibernate. It's pretty useful on old PC without the need for slow startups.
Jun 09, 2009 21:07
Thanks for the information. I didn't know you could make desktop PC go into hibernate. It's pretty useful on old PC without the need for slow startups.
Jun 09, 2009 21:07
for "lazy" users, at least turn off your monitor or LCD display, even while on your lunch break. i don't have the stats or numbers but i remember reading somewhere that this uses up a lot of electricity (and can prolong the battery life of your notebook).
Jun 10, 2009 17:46
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