In Windows 7 Use Sleep to Resume the OS in 2 Seconds

As far as the Windows operating system goes, Microsoft advocates the use of Sleep rather than Shut Down, with two immediate consequences. The first is intimately related to power savings, while the second involves being able to bring the operating system back to life in under 2 seconds. Windows in general, and Windows Vista in particular, have constantly been criticized for high boot times. Microsoft has went head over heals to make the Windows 7 startup process faster than Vista's, and has not even been shy of delivering a boot drag race with the pre-Beta Milestone 3 build of the next iteration of the Windows client and its precursor, in order to showcase the advances delivered.

Still, when it comes down to power-off options, the company would choose Sleep over Shut Down without hesitation. In Sleep mode “All of the open programs, documents, and files are preserved in system RAM, and the rest of the system is powered off. Because only memory is powered, Sleep consumes a very small amount of power—typically less than 1W on a mobile PC, and typically less than 3W on a desktop PC. The primary benefit of Sleep is that resume is very fast—most systems resume from sleep in less than 2 seconds,” Dean DeWhitt, program manager in the Windows kernel team, explained.


According to the graphic on the left, the power consumption of a Windows operating system in Sleep mode is comparable with that of the shut down machine. However, rebooting a Shut Down computer not only takes over 15 seconds (in ideal lab conditions, over 20/25 ideally in the real world), but also consumes more power than when the PC is simply resumed from Sleep......

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In Windows 7 Use Sleep to Resume the OS in 2 Seconds - Instead of Shut Down, Microsoft advises - Softpedia

"According to the graphic on the left, the power consumption of a Windows operating system in Sleep mode is comparable with that of the shut down machine. However, rebooting a Shut Down computer not only takes over 15 seconds (in ideal lab conditions, over 20/25 ideally in the real world), but also consumes more power than when the PC is simply resumed from Sleep

The Ms Engineers are starting to annoy me with statements such as this, that assume we never went to school. Under these circumstances, I will acknowledge that the computer will use precisely 11 seconds more power. perhaps an infinitely little more in the initial surge. The remainder of the verbal diarrhoea is just that - bs.
Not forgetting, if it matters, when splitting hairs over almost unreadable power savings, the wear and tear on certain parts of the computer in sleep mode.

With no statement about where the break even point is, the info is fairly useless. Is 1 hour in sleep better than shutdown? How about 3 or 4 hours? Is power consumption the only consideration as the article would suggest or are things being worn out as davehc suggests? Tell me the whole story, then I will reconsider how I do things.

This reminds me of the greenies who want us all to use the squiggly light bulbs. When I am done with a light I turn it off. This on off cycle may happen 20 times in a day. The squiggles are florescent bulbs and florescent bulbs use more energy to start up than they will use in the next 2-3 hours, so am I saving with those bulbs or actually losing?

Not enough info to make a proper decision.

Gary

Yes. The wear and tear would, I imagine, be really negligible in either circumstance. But they will have to come up with some better detailed info to convince me.
By an absolute coincidence, by the way, the BBC an an item on the news this morning that EuroControl have banned 100 watt filament bulbs, pretty much with immediate effect. Retailers and manufacturers are allowed to sell off any surplus stocks. I havn't read any detail, but it may be a comparitive power consideration, rather than the type of bulb.

garysgold said:

With no statement about where the break even point is, the info is fairly useless. Is 1 hour in sleep better than shutdown? How about 3 or 4 hours? Is power consumption the only consideration as the article would suggest or are things being worn out as davehc suggests? Tell me the whole story, then I will reconsider how I do things.

This reminds me of the greenies who want us all to use the squiggly light bulbs. When I am done with a light I turn it off. This on off cycle may happen 20 times in a day. The squiggles are florescent bulbs and florescent bulbs use more energy to start up than they will use in the next 2-3 hours, so am I saving with those bulbs or actually losing?

Not enough info to make a proper decision.

Gary

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the thing is that they save power as you use them longer and longer.....

at some point these two lines (one of the usage of regular bulbs and the other floresent) will overlap and eventually the floresent will use less power in the long run (they are hoping its before the light bulb dies....)

and yes also at some point it will be negligible the amount of power saved from a waking up from sleep compared to a cold boot....

i dont think the should be making these "statements" since these are not set in stone and could in fact be the opposite....

the only reason i would see the difference is in notebooks and netbooks where ever watt counts....
(and sleep is sometimes necessary since this usefull for portability.....)

I use sleep all the time on my laptop.

Why bother waiting for it to boot up when sleep does the job!

Most of the time I have it plugged in so it really does not matter about power.

The little difference between sleep and shut down in money spent really does not bother me if there is a difference because I rather have it turn on right away!

Keep going guys - good thread!! In most os Europe, they are brainwashing us to switch off any standbye devices when nor in use. Microsoft are advov´cating the opposite!

darkassain said:

the thing is that they save power as you use them longer and longer.....

at some point these two lines (one of the usage of regular bulbs and the other floresent) will overlap and eventually the floresent will use less power in the long run (they are hoping its before the light bulb dies....)

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Hi DA,

Didn't really want to discuss light bulbs, but they only save money if left on for hours at a time, and they only last 10,000 hrs. or whatever if they are turned on and left on. Turning them on and off cuts that down considerably. And you do realize that they contain mercury. If you break one you should use a ventilator mask while cleaning it up. As with most things, they only tell you the part of the story that supports their position and nothing else.

Davehc, watch for 95 watt bulbs in the future. Most of my bulbs are 75w or less anyway.

As for sleep vs cold boot I'm guessing the difference is already negligible unless you boot many times a day in which case sleep is a better option.

Gary

I've never really used the sleep function so I'm probably biased. The only reason I ever left my PC on 24/7 was for torrenting. Now that I'm using a seedbox for torrents, my main PC doesn't need to be on 24/7. I can wait the 60 odd secs it takes to to switch on the PC when I first use it.

Thoughts off power saving don't even come into it

However, I can see the advantage for sleep mode and laptops.

Generally I boot the 'puter in the morning when I get up and shutdown at bedtime. During the day I use sleep if I'm not going to be using it for 30 mins or more. I don't like waiting for it to boot either, but in the morning I can get a coffee while it's booting so I don't notice it.

Gary

I generally follow the same startegy as Gary. Boot it up in the morning sleep thru out my working day when im away from my desk. Then shut down when i hit the door. I think the power consumption aurgument is a moot point.

I don't see why its necessary for desktops. I just leave mine on 24/7 ... I do turn it off maybe ever 2 or 3 weeks for a night just to let everything cool down completely.

My hard drive and monitor both go to memory saving states, as do other parts of the computer. I figure that part of the convenience of having a desktop is that I never am waiting for it to boot, EVER. Not even 1 second.

The sleep option is the one I use. To me it just makes sense so it is not a concept that I disagree with.

I don't disagree with the concept of using sleep either. Just a habit for me to turn it off at night. I found that Vista needed a shutdown or reboot occasionally to clean out the RAM so stayed with the habit. I did go a week in Vista of not shutting down and while it was better than W2K I continued my habit. I have noticed that Seven is handling RAM far better than Vista. I have not yet tried running it for a week, but will once the public beta is out. I doubt that the difference in power consumption between shutdown and sleep overnight is worth worrying about. Seems a 6 to 1 half dozen to the other deal to me, as I can get up in the morning and hit the power button on the way to the coffee maker and before I get back the comp is all booted and waiting.

Gary

garysgold said:

I don't disagree with the concept of using sleep either. Just a habit for me to turn it off at night.

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I think that's more to the point. I'm going to try sleep a bit more often and see if it's a habit I can get into.

Oh I am not saying there is anything WRONG with it, just that its not necessary.

I am going to do a restart at least of my machine weekly though , perhaps even like a "saturday night shut down" every week, let it sit cold.

I already use sleep on 7 & its the same as putting XP in standby, I have it set to wake by mouse, works for me.

emmm

ok so I know this may be strange but after reading some of the posts I was slightly confused where the info came from.

I guess you guys know that a shut down laptop still loses energy, and that 1w is really not that much when compared to the amount in the battery. Also since lithium battery just keeping it connected wastes about as much energy as the os would at 1w. ( that's one j/sec) (How long would that take to drain a battery?)

Ok so more to my area of expertise - the light bulbs. Your right, some environmental light bulbs suck, basically anything not fluorescent. Fluorescent light bulbs - contrary to what the guy before said do not take more power to start up than ordinary bulbs, they do have a lower brightness for the first while but they still take 13W to produce the 60W of light of a normal bulb, they also last longer - the normal light bulbs average 750 hours, fluorescent do 10,000.
As for the problems with the heavy metals- not really an issue, I wouldnt recommend you eat it, but the soil in most cities has more contaminants.
Also over the life of the bulb, the bulb produces much much less contaminants than the amount released by producing the energy to power the other bulbs. (Thats assuming that it was produced by everything except renewable energy sources)

None of those are the real problems, we're talking the third generation of environmental light bulbs - if they hadn't sorted that out by now then they'd be shot.

There are real problems though - white light. Its not normal and your body cant handle it, it stops you sleeping, gives you headaches ( some people) and generally is not good thing to read by. But computers use LCDs that do the same things and are twice as bad for you.

I dont know, I just have trouble hearing some of these things since most of the science used to make them is really badly done. Dont believe it. If you have any questions just ask and I will clarify. I am also not saying this to grand stand- I am an Environmental science student who's spent way too much of his life on this issue.

I don't like to keep the programs in RAM during sleep for extended periods of time...too worried about errors/corrupted files, etc.

I leave my computer on 24/7.