Save Your Money and Your Computer: Hibernate

The Skinny
Setting Up Easy Hibernation: Vista

The great feature that's rarely used

The Hibernate feature of operating systems is one that is often overlooked by the general public. It allows for power saving on desktops as well as a quick start up for laptops. Unfortunately, in place of utilizing hibernation, many desktop owners opt for the antiquated and wasteful “leave the computer on 24/7” option. And laptop owners kill precious time with complete shutdowns and startups.

A long time ago, in a nerd’s room far, far away…

Do you remember the good ol’ days of computing when starting your computer was a secret and time-consuming process? The long forgotten art involved inserting and removing disks that were about the size of a baby seal and flipping ginormous securing levers. Often times, I felt as though I were dealing with a rough neck’s industrial tool as opposed to the geek gear that it was supposed to be. Hell, I’m surprised I was never fined for failing to wear a hard hat and insulated gloves.

Apart from the startup pain, constantly turning your computer on and off caused concern about components wiggling out of their respective slots due to temperature induced contracting and expanding. If a ram stick were to suddenly pop out while you were in the midst of watching a fat man sing “It’s Raining Men” with is bellybutton on YouTube, the world as you know it would end, right?

The work around to these issues: leave the damn thing on all day, every day.

Make like a bear

Twenty years ago, these were valid reasons to leave a computer running 24/7. But like leg warmers, cocaine, and “Where’s the Beef?”, just because it made sense in the 80′s, doesn’t mean it makes sense today.

Unless you are a power user running a server or in need of remote access to your PC, there is no reason to leave your computer running when you sleep or are away for hours on end. If anything, this serves to wear down your computer’s lifetime. It’s similar to leaving your TV on all day. Switch to using hibernate, and you’ll save money on your electric bill as well as your computer parts.

So…what the heck is “hibernate”?

Hibernating your computer, saves the current state of the operating system to the hard drive and shuts it down. When it is restarted, this state is restored.

Ok…so what does THAT mean??

It means that you are, in effect, putting your computer on pause while it is not in use and allowing for a relatively quick startup. All running programs will also be as you left them. If you were in the middle of typing an email to your buddies telling them about the most excellent web site, DavidGranado.com (shameless plug), then the email would be restored with the cursor blinking in the exact same spot you left it.

In my religious use of this feature on my old (STOLEN) laptop, I would often go several months without a full restart of Windows XP. I still make full use of it in my new Vista system. However, due to the complete change in the way the operating system works when compared to XP, going into and out of hibernation can take a smidge longer (This is due to Vista’s nasty “Super Fetch”, but that’s for another post).

The Ubuntu flavor of linux also implements this feature. As of 8.04, it was a bit hit and miss, in my experience. Version 8.10 seems to be a bit more effective, but if you’re a linux user, I’m sure you’re a tech-head who has already adjusted your system appropriately to make full use of this feature.