Put Your Computer to Sleep

Do you leave your desktop computer ON all day and night? Or do you shutdown your computer everytime you are finished using it?

You should consider using Windows "standby" (sleep) mode instead. Here are some advantages:

1. Save Electricity - Why waste all that energy when you arent using your computer? When you use standby mode, it barely uses any electricity whatsoever.
   
   
2. Safer - When you leave your computer ON all day, that means your computer is online all the time. Therefore, your computer can be susceptible to malware or virus attacks. Whereas when your computer is on standby, your computer is essentially sleeping and not accessible or seen from the outside.
   
   
3. Faster bootup - If you shutdown your computer, you'll have to wait at least a minute or two for your computer to boot up. Whereas it only takes seconds when booting up from standby.
   


4. Easy - You can have your computer go on standby mode automatically after a certain period of time of it being idle, so you dont have to do anything. When you are done using the computer, just leave. To wake up your computer from standby mode, you just need to move the mouse or press a key on the keyboard. No need to bend down and reach for the power button all the time. To enable this option go to Control Panel --> Power Options.

If your computer doesnt seem to go to standby mode automatically, there is probably something running on your computer that is preventing it to do so. Its difficult to know what it is, but you can try closing all of your browsers and any other open applications. If that still doesnt work, then you might have some programs running in the background in which you'll need to disable or uninstall. You can also try a nifty program called "Close All Windows". With one click it will close all of your open programs. It will be the same as if you clicked the close button (x) on the top right corner of all open programs. But dont worry, if you have an open program that has unsaved work (ie. MS Word), it will still prompt you to save your work. In otherwords, it will not perform a "force quit" of your programs.

Bottom Line
Make sure that if you do use Standby (or Hibernate), remember to always save your work! Never leave unsaved documents or projects open no matter what. Other than that, using Standby should be a no-brainer.