For me depends on how long I will be away I use a laptop as my main machine and use it at college. if I am going to be a while (over a hour) I will shut down if at home but at college I usually use sleep during break and dinner in the class room (locked until class resumes) expect I sometime leave it running to perform a full virus scan during a dinner break.
thats what i meant, I didnt make it very clear i know, i meant i think S/D is beneficial to release this "lost" RAM as i found Windows was never releasing it, an example: at bootup after all "basic" systems have been started (ie Zone Alarm, Windows and Utorrent which is set to run at startup) My PC uses 28% of its 3GB of RAM, now Firefox especially, iv noticed has a tendency not to release its RAM when its shut down, by the end of the week i was using 50-60% at the same basic level because of certain apps, (again mainly firefox from what i could see) not telling Windows that the RAM wasnt in use any more,
in the interests of fairness i should point out that sleep was not used every night, often i leave the PC on overnight, sleep was perhaps used 3-4 nights out of 7. im not saying that sleep was causing this problem, Im merely saying that a shutdown can be helpful to free up the "lost" RAM (more useful me thinks would be Mozilla coing up with a FF that memory manages better.. although tbh it seems to be alot better (that iv noticed) since upgrading to 3.5.6)
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