Power surges or power drops that occur when a machine is powered by its power adapter are more harmful to a computer that is asleep than to one that shuts down completely. The heat produced by a sleeping machine exposes all components to greater heat most of the time. Computers turned on all the time can have a shorter lifespan. The second difference is energy consumption.
You may have heard that you save more money and energy if you turn off your computer every night. However, according to Energy Star, the reality is that you only save one or two watts when you turn off a computer. Should I hibernate, sleep, or turn off my computer? Whether you're concerned about efficiency, the health of your device, or power consumption, this is something most of us have asked ourselves before. Perhaps you've even consulted with several professionals and received mixed feedback on what's best.
While each of these shutdown options seems to turn off your computer, they all work differently. Because of this, it's important to first define what each of these shutdown options means. The machine will also come back to life very quickly after sleep. Getting out of sleep is much faster than starting from a standstill and can even seem instantaneous on faster machines.
For example, if you're traveling and your laptop isn't going to be plugged in for several hours or even a couple of days, sleep mode could gradually drain your battery. Mac users will be fine with sleep mode, safe sleep mode, which is an automatic hibernation that activates when the battery runs out, and regular shutdowns. It puts all the information that Windows requires for a quick start into its RAM, which is very similar to sleep mode. Putting your laptop into sleep mode during the night is also OK if you plan to start working first thing in the morning.
If you're going to leave it on all the time, make sure to check the Sleep option in the Power menu. All open programs receive a scheduled notification from the operating system to stop reading and writing files before a forced shutdown occurs. It shuts down all active programs and shuts down the operating system and computer, to a state that consumes almost negligible power. You won't find the new hybrid sleep option in the start menu, but it replaces the sleep option so you can use it in the future.
However, while shutting down is the best option if you want to save energy, it is the least efficient if you are going to turn your computer back on in a short period of time. In the “System Settings” window, you can choose what to do by pressing the power button, the sleep button, or closing the lid. The computer runs important background maintenance programs, such as virus scans, disk cleaning, and system backups, especially during the night hours (while the computer is in sleep mode). Shutting down the machine also deletes running tasks regardless of whether you have saved them or not, although you may see messages asking you to save your work if that is the case.
To start a laptop that is turned off, it will take a minute or longer to boot and even longer if you have some applications configured to open when the PC starts up. Since everything needs to shut down completely for the computer to shut down, you'll have to save your work first and you won't be able to pick up where you left off without reopening everything. While a PC still consumes some power when turned off (unless it's disconnected from the power supply), it's still a better power-saving option.
