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I never liked using standby on a laptop exactly for this reason. One thing to note about hibernate, you should reboot the system every once in awhile to refresh the registry because hibernate simulates an always-on environment.

My parents taught me many, many years ago that when I'm done with something that uses electricity: TURN IT OFF! (Yes, they yelled at me... frequently )

I have always used standby on both my laptop and my desktop and have had no problems with battery life. I have left my laptop on standby overnight unplugged only to find it with the same battery life in the morning. This article is partially false..

Three Toshibas**: All 3 are set to go to Hibernate 1. When the Shut Down screen is selected. 2. When the screen is closed at the end of a session. 3. Whenever the "On-Battery-Only" power level falls to 5% of remaining power.
Toshiba has an excellent built-in power-mode management utility which allows selection of the dual power modes like Windows does, but allows easily customized configurations (DVD movie watching, business presentations, 10-12 hour on-line sessions, etc.) which can be selected by 2-3 mouse clicks.

**One runs Win XP 64-bit; One runs Vista 32-bit with Intel Atom 1.66Ghz CPU; One runs Vista 64-bit.

Sleep mode is only selected when a session is interrupted for no more than 4-5 hours. Like the above posts, I have found that too much "Sleep" makes the laptop cranky and crucial data may be lost. I agree with the above opinions that a periodic complete shut-down and re-boot is good for the Registry. I also think that a deep discharge of the battery every 6 weeks is good for the battery and power control system. I NEVER leave my system plugged into the AC line because our local power company is plauged by system-wide brown-outs and frequent severe lightning storms. At another home I own, adjacent high-voltage transmission lines suffer lightning strikes miles away which induce ground voltage surges. These are ameliorated by having a carbon-block varistor (surge protector) installed between the incoming AC line and the power meter. The same unit is used at my primary residence.

deepen03, on 07 November 2009 - 02:06 PM, said:

I agree. My experience overnight, even on the three-cell netbook, is that standby battery drain is negligible. I use standby except when it would be common sense to shut down entirely: for extended time away or to reboot to refresh XP. Hibernate is disabled on all my systems.

This post has been edited by Internet2k4: 07 November 2009 - 09:11 AM

My netbook has been in standby mode since I got back from New York in August. I just turned it back on a week ago and it was still at 65% battery.

2 things I don't like about hibernate: the large amount of space it takes up (typically the amount of RAM you have in your system or a bit less) and ( if as you claim it takes 20 seconds to come back to fully alive... well my laptop boots up from dead cold off to being able to open a browser and check my email in 23 seconds... so there's really no point.

Standby meanwhile does have it's glitches... but they are rare... maybe once every 2 or 3 months everything comes out of standby EXCEPT the screen... which means you can't do a damn thing except shut down and lose everything.. yeah.

On the other hand, it's instant. Takes no HD space. And 95 times out of 100 it works ok.

btw, if you have things attached to your machine, like external drives, or other USB powered devices like speakers, web cams, etc, standby CAN drain much quicker because those devices typically stay on or receive minimal power. Watch that light on your external USB drive and you'll notice it stays on.. as does your WIFI card as well.. .and a bunch of other things... so yeah, depending on your system standby, if you remove the power supply, can be an issue.

"You might loose your work if there's a glitch coming out of stand-by".... what a whimpy excuse... ever heard of saving your work before quitting or taking a break? It's simple, click the save button, leave the application active. The vast majority of the time you can pick right up where you left off, and in the worse case, reboot and you've lost nothing...

If your laptop has a function to come in and out of standby when you close the lid, it can usually be switched to go in and out of hibernate instead. In that case, just close the lid and stuff your laptop in your bag. No need for that added few seconds to wait for it to go into hibernate. It'll get there.

This post has been edited by lutra: 08 November 2009 - 10:54 PM

On my desktop computer I find that after I go into hibernation mode, I have trouble establishing my wireless internet connection. Several repairs are often required. If I just shut down it will connect to the internet on start up.

I prefer Hibernate. Too many times a power failure has closed down Windows from Standby, making the computer unstable for several sessions afterwards. Overnight, just shut it down. Standby is no better than running a screen saver with password protection, if you are just stepping away from the computer and don't want others looking at your work (or play).