Thinkpad T14 Gen 2 - Is it safe to migrate away from “Modern Sleep”?

[bblake]

I recently migrated to a Thinkpad T14 Gen2 AMD from a T400s (over 8 years old!)
On the whole this is a good machine, but it uses the so called “Modern Sleep” or "Modern Suspend" which I don’t like at all.
I would like to switch back to S3 in the BIOS, but get the dire warning about needing to completely reinstall the operating system. I like to leave the machine in sleep rather than powering off and then on again.

Can I ask if others have done this, and whether they found it worked without problems?

There’s a useful post on this forum: viewtopic.php?f=83&t=134156 which warns that you could have trouble. I also found this excellent post from a T14 gen 2 user who says he is not having trouble having switched to S3. https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comme ... _t14_gen2/

More on why I dislike modern sleep:
First, like the others in the forum posts, I don’t like feeling I have no control on what the Thinkpad is doing when supposedly in sleep – see tales of hot laptops in carry bags!
Also important: I have measured the power consumption of my T14 when in sleep. If in stand alone the consumption jumps around dependent on what it is doing, but the average consumption is about 5 watts. That compares with less than a watt for my old T440s – little more then when powered off but plugged in, provided the battery is charged. But I mostly operate now plugged into a USB-C dock. Here the power averages more like 10-11 watts. Some of that will be the dock. But over a year a very rough estimate says that if mostly leave the machine in sleep when not in use I will use about 60kWH per year – cost c. £UK£18. Not insignificant, and not good for the environment.

[bblake]

Title should, of course, be is it save to migrate away from Modern Sleep!

[bblake]

Well, in the end I decided to take an image of my windows drive (in case I have to recover) and I switched to sleep state = [LINUX] in the BIOS. All is working well after relatively limited experience. I've had no problems either going into S3 sleep and coming out so far. Windows appears to work fine as do all applications tested. The Power consumption when in sleep is now down to 0.6 watts standalone and 3 watt on a Thinkpad USB-C Universal dock.
This forum post suggests editing the registry, but I haven't done that. https://appuals.com/disable-modern-standby-windows/

I really think Modern Sleep is of questionable benefit for most. It is poorly implemented. It wastes power, results in overheated laptops in bags etc. Recovery from sleep seems to takes about the same time as before - so where is the benefit? It should be possible to easily switch it on and off.

[bblake]

Alas - no replies or comments. I am still concerned about whether the registry should also be edited.
This forum used to be one of the reasons to use Thinkpads, with the huge amounts of help available.

But I guess it has maybe been superceeded by the Lenovo Support forums? https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-T ... -p/tp01_en They don't seem like anything like the value that this forum used to be!

[RealBlackStuff]

Methinks many forum members are more interested in older Thinkpads, hence the lack of replies.
Also the seemingly downhill direction of W11 may have something to do with the aversion against newer models.

[jetkins]

I worked around this on my T14 Gen 1 by enabling Hibernation and configuring the Power button to Hibernate instead of Sleep. Now I can hibernate quickly and easily before putting it away or into my bag, and rest assured that it's not going to be doing anything until I turn it back on.