suspend or hibernate for longer life :-)

[esmail]

Hello,

My T61 (running XP sp2) has replaced my Dell tower which was on and running 24 hours a day for weeks, sometimes months at a time. I am asking myself if my T61 in the advanced mini-dock should be running this much? Not sure if laptops are designed for such constant-on time.

I have been wondering if it would make sense to suspend or hibernate my machine at night? Would this be a good idea and cut down on wear & tear? Or not?

And if it’s a good idea, would suspend or hibernate be more preferable? The time to go into this state and come out does not matter to me. I am just trying to find the best way to prolong my system’s life.

Thanks,
Esmail

[aaa]

Keep it suspended, for most of the day as well. Main reason is heat, which is bad for the battery and hard drive. Suspending is better than hibernating because it's short recovery time would encourage you to do it in the day as well.

Also, the IBM power manager has battery charge threshold settings in it. Since a battery wears out faster if kept fully charged all the time, this feature comes in handy for making your battery last longer.

[esmail]

Keep it suspended, for most of the day as well. Main reason is heat, which is bad for the battery and hard drive. Suspending is better than hibernating because it's short recovery time would encourage you to do it in the day as well.

Yes, that makes sense, and I think I have been using suspend a bit more frequently just because of that.

Also, the IBM power manager has battery charge threshold settings in it. Since a battery wears out faster if kept fully charged all the time, this feature comes in handy for making your battery last longer.

I'm not quite sure I follow this though .. when I hibernate, an image of memory is written to disk and the system is off, suspend just put the system into a low power state right?

Does the charging of the battery vary with either? It is plugged in 95% of the time.

A few weeks I got a popup sort of reminder/suggestion from the system to adjust the battery threshold to something or other since it apparently had detected that it was plugged in most of the time. I don't recall what exactly it said but I "ok'ed" it because it seemed reasonable at the time.

[mgo]

Keep it suspended, for most of the day as well. Main reason is heat, which is bad for the battery and hard drive. Suspending is better than hibernating because it's short recovery time would encourage you to do it in the day as well.

Yes, that makes sense, and I think I have been using suspend a bit more frequently just because of that.

Also, the IBM power manager has battery charge threshold settings in it. Since a battery wears out faster if kept fully charged all the time, this feature comes in handy for making your battery last longer.

I'm not quite sure I follow this though .. when I hibernate, an image of memory is written to disk and the system is off, suspend just put the system into a low power state right?A few weeks I got a popup sort of reminder/suggestion from the system to adjust the battery threshold to something or other since it apparently had detected that it was plugged in most of the time. I don't recall what exactly it said but I "ok'ed" it because it seemed reasonable at the time.

The battery information tab in power manager has a selection for "battery maintenance". Click that and select "custom". Then set the "start charging when below..." and the field to 90%. This will allow less frequent charge cycles when the machine is on AC most of the time, taking more stress off the battery. Also check "notify me when reset is recommended" and check "periodically show messages..."

My suggestions come from other threads here in this forum on the topic.

On the sleep vs. hibernate topic: If you just want to turn off most of the machine and have it come back quickly, sleep is fine. Just press Fn+F4 for that. I use a power on pass word and hard drive password for security, so I use hibernate, (Fn+F12) which requires those passwords coming out of hibernate. Sleep usually just asks for the Windows password if it's set to do that.

XP hibernate is quite fast, Vista hibernate is slower. Another good thing about sleep or hibernate in Vista, the hard drive thrashing indexer will not do its useless thing coming out of hibernate like it does coming from a cold boot.

[Elhabash]

There is also the consideration of energy usage. If you don't need it running, why waste energy?

My feeling is that it is good for the OS to shut down the computer every now and then, but maybe this is just a feeling left over from the old times of Win95 and the like...


Also, it is good for the battery to empty it completely every two months or so, to recalibrate the internal sensor. I don't know if this is still valid nowadays, but for Li-Ion batteries it is best to keep them above 80% charge as much as possible, and completely empty them every month or two.

My old T40p lasted well enough without me taking extra care for the battery, they are not that expensive to replace after a few years. My 9 cell battery lasts approximately 20 seconds now, but it is 4 years old. It was fine for about 2.5 years, then started to degrade quicker.