Twenty Something Sense

Laptops have evolved throughout our twenty something lives to become the most frequently used machine in our arsenal of technology toys (u can argue a cell phone as well, but I’d say the majority of us young professionals spend more time staring at our laptop screens than we do our cell phone screens).  We’ve become so attached, dependent, and addicted to our laptops that even our beloved TV time is most often spent with our best friend (laptop) on our lap.

To chronicle how frequently we use our laptops, let me walk through my day today.  I woke up this morning at the Sheraton in NYC and powered up my laptop to check email quickly and then powered down (a bad morning habit I have).  I enjoyed some complimentary fresh squeezed orange juice and donuts in the hotel’s club lounge and then made my way on to Penn Station to board the 7:55 train for Great Neck.  I took a window seat on the train and flipped on my laptop again to get a few things prepared for work this morning, subsequently powering down as we were pulling up to Great Neck station.  After a short 30oyd walk to the office I powered up my laptop at my desk.  After a short day of work, I will depart at 1:30pm today for the airport and I will power down and stuff my laptop in my messenger bag, powering up again several minutes after I make my way through security at Laguardia.  As I board the plane, the laptop has to be powered down for takeoff (god knows why), and upon reaching an arbitrary altitude I am instructed by a magical voice above me that it is now safe to turn my laptop back on again – and so I do.  Twenty minutes before wheels down in Chicago, the magical voice returns and warns me that very bad things will happen to all of the nice people around me should I leave my laptop running during final approach to O’hare – I quickly power down.  After scurrying through the busy American terminal, I grab a cab The traffic home to Lincoln Park can be a real drag on Friday afternoons, so I pull my laptop back out to get some final work done before the weekend (and really so I can take my attention away from the surrounding traffic that is delaying my much anticipated date with my good friend bud-light).  Finally I arrive home and power my laptop down.

In the course of one day I will power down my laptop six times!  This would be a major headache if it weren’t for the introduction of advanced powering down techniques that were introduced a decade ago with Windows 98.  See, when personal computers were first introduced thirty years ago there were only two ways to power down your computer – Shutdown and Restart.  Each time you powered down your computer you had to save everything you were doing and close everything that was open.  Upon restart, you would have to take the time to bring everything back up that you were working on last time you had your computer on.  This needless to say was a major pain and a complete waste of time.

Let me explain the two different advanced power down options that Microsoft offers so you can begin to take advantage of these if you don’t already do (Apple Owners – the names are probably different but I would guess the functions are the same on your machine)

Hibernate
This function takes all of your data stored in RAM (what we commonly call Memory) and it writes it to a temporary location on your hard disk.  When you turn your computer back on it will copy the data back to RAM from your hard disk and you are back at the exact same point you left off.

The best part of hibernate is that it requires no power whatsoever once the laptop is in hibernate mode.  You can leave an unplugged laptop in hibernate mode for months with no issues.

Sleep / Stand By
This function turns off power to every component of your laptop with the exception of RAM (and probably some other low level circuitry).  When you turn your computer back on it simply restores power to all of the components and you are back exactly where you left off.

Sleep differs from Hibernate in that your laptop requires some of your batteries power to stay in sleep mode.  It uses very, very little power, but it is important to remember that it does require some.  You can leave your computer in sleep mode for a couple of days – but anything beyond that is not recommended.

The benefit of using sleep over hibernate is that the process is faster to power down and power up.

When deciding whether to use sleep or hibernate, I suggest going by this rule – If you are going to use your computer again that day, go with sleep, otherwise I’d suggest using hibernate.

I personally shut down or restart my laptop about once a month.  I only choose this option when there is something wrong with my machine and I am forced to do a real power down.  Otherwise I always use a combination of sleeping and hibernating and I think you will find these functions very useful as well.