Hibernate After Sleep

I'm not answering a lecturer interrogate this time; just passing on some useful information.

You can save power away setting up your Windows PC to go into sleep mood (called Standby in XP) after and then many minutes without use. You can save even more power by having it go from sleep to hibernation after a longer period of neglect.

Both modes save power, and can bring you back to the same place you were at before you high-powered pour down. While sleep mode cuts shoot down on power consumption considerably, your computer is still on. It placid needs electricity to keep Windows, currently-running applications, and outdoors files in RAM. But when a Personal computer hibernates, it copies everything in RAM to a file cabinet connected the hard drive, then shuts down the Personal computer completely.

Hibernation saves more power, but it's slower. A modern PC rear go in and out of sleep almost instantaneously. It can take more than half a minute to hibernate, and some other half minute to wake up.

For the good balance of great power and convenience, I keep my PC set to go to sleep after 20 transactions of no consumption, and to hibernate after 180 transactions. (That's for AC power; on electric battery, it's 5 and 90 minutes.) Here's how to set this up:

If you're using Windows XP, right-click the desktop and select Properties. Tick the Riddle Saver tablet, then the Power button. Click the Hibernate tab and find out Enable Hibernation. Click the Apply button. And so click the Top executive Schemes tab for secondary and hibernate options.

In Vista or Windows 7, click Start, type power, and select Power Options. In the leftish pane, click Choose when to turn off the presentation. You'll incu a Sleep option in that location, but nothing most hibernation. So click the Deepen modern top executive settings link. Expand the Sleep incision for "Kip after" and Hibernate after" options.

Contributing Editor Lincoln Spector writes about technology and movie theatre. Email your tech questions to him at answer@pcworld.com , or Wiley Post them to a profession of helpful folks on the PCW Answer Line meeting place . Follow Lincoln along Twitter .