Going to sleep

I've never been a great fan of sleeping or hibernating computers. Traditionally it took awhile to happen, then a longer while to come back on again, then a wait to restore the Internet connection and then the applications would often crash. Hardly worth the hassle and the power savings made were dubious.

Things have changed though, I've started to use it more often both on demand when I've finished using the computer and after quarter-of-an-hour when I just walk away. The difference is modern hardware and software has improved the response times. On systems with SSD hard drives the response time is down to a couple of seconds and that includes the Internet re-connection and Windows and applications seem more resilient to hibernate and sleep actions. Also modern CPU and associated hardware take much less power drain these days and power supply units are more power efficient.

In these green, energy saving times when your energy bill rises in jumps it makes more sense now to use sleep and hibernate.