Standby vs. Hibernate

What's the difference between standby and hibernate on Windows?

Standby is like telling your computer to go to sleep. Hibernate is like...well...hibernating.

Standby

• Consumes power


• Boots up fast (usually within 10 seconds).


• Wakes up by keyboard or mouse.

Hibernate

• Does not consume power


• Boots up much faster than booting from shutdown


• Wakes up by pressing the power button.
  

Which one should I use? It all depends. Here is what I do.

• Home Desktop - If you have a home desktop computer that is always connected to the Internet, use standby. Why? Because when you computer is on standby, it wont be connected to the Internet. Your computer is more prone to hackers or other bad stuff when your computer connected to the Internet 24/7. Also, the computer wakes up from standby extremely fast (less than 10 seconds).


• Personal Laptop - Use hibernate, that way it wont consume any battery life. Also, set it so that when you close your laptop lid, it will automatically hibernate. That way you dont have to press the power button and then close your lid. It will save you a step. 99% of the time, when you close the laptop lid, most likely it is because you are done using it. Go into control panel -> power options to set this on your laptop.


• Work Laptop -
  



• Although you should ALWAYS save your documents, hibernating should be pretty safe. Dont use standby with unsaved documents.



• If you use a laptop, in power options set it so that when you close your laptop lid, it hibernates. That way when you are done using your laptop you can just close the lid instead of pressing the power button and then closing the lid. Saves a step ;)
  



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Tips

Hibernate and Standby - Save all your work and close any open files.