Vista Beta 2 takes a sleeping pill

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James Bannan24 May 2006, 3:00 PM

Windows sleep mode has always been a bit of a gamble, because you can never be sure that the machine will wake up from its slumber reliably or quickly. But Microsoft is promising this will all change in Vista ... and has even taken things a step further.


sleepmode.jpg

Looking for a fast yet reliable way to shut down your machine and bring it back up just as speedily? Looks like Vista might just have the solution. The new Sleep power state is a combination of the Hibernate and Standby power modes and provides the best of both worlds.

I have to admit, I never really used Standby or Hibernate - call me paranoid, but if I'm going to walk away from the machine at the end of the day, I sleep better knowing that it actually shut down. In any case, Hibernate doesn't shut down that much quicker than a normal shutdown, while the speed of Sleep comes at the price of the risk that your machine might reboot anyway, as your files and settings are stored in RAM - lose power to the machine and it's all over.

Vista's Sleep mode combines the features of both - it maintains power to the RAM so that you get the speed benefit, but it also caches the data in it to the hard drive in case of power failure. In such a scenario, Vista will actually kick in a resume from Sleep mode, using the data stored to disk instead. Neat.

Microsoft claims that resuming from Sleep takes about 2-3 seconds. Well, I can confirm with Vista Beta 2 that this is certainly the case. Actually going in to Sleep mode took around 10 seconds (because the data is written to disk), but the resume was just as quick as Microsoft's claims. Most impressive.

Using a desktop, you can come out of Sleep mode by hitting the power button, the keyboard or moving the mouse. For business machines you might want to change this feature, otherwise people will be accidentally bumping the mouse, waking up the computer then logging helpdesk calls claiming something's wrong. With laptops, hitting the power button or shutting the lid puts the machine straight into Sleep mode.


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Troy Symes:

Re: your comment "... while the speed of Hibernate comes at the price of volatile data storage. Your files and settings are stored in RAM - lose power to the machine and it’s all over."

I would like to clarify that hibernate creates an 'image' of your current memory state and stores this to your hard drive. Then your machine is switched off completely.

That means if you have 512M of RAM, Windows will copy eveything loaded into memory as a 512M 'image' on to your hard drive. When your system is restarted, instead of having to wait for the machine to boot up normally, Windows just loads the 'image' back into memory and starts off where you were before.

For laptop users and those who have slower machines, hibernate is one of the best features Microsoft introduced into Windows XP.

29 February 2008, 8:28 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

James Bannan:

Thanks for the clarification Troy - always good to get feedback

29 February 2008, 8:28 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

James Bannan:

The article's been updated accordingly. :-)

29 February 2008, 8:28 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

The Gibbon:

Once again, Microsoft is ripping features. This is more or less exactly the same as Apple's "Safe sleep" - a version of this was available back in OS 9!

29 February 2008, 8:28 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

m:

awesome. :) i'd love this on my MacBook Pro.. currently on the Mac side, closing the lid makes the computer sleep (And eventually hibernate) but on the Windows side, u can either sleep-or-hibernate... with Vista it will work just like the Mac!

29 February 2008, 8:28 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

ads:

In response to The Gibbon, please stay away from sites which contain information totally irrelevant to inferior systems such as macs.

29 February 2008, 8:28 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Anthony:

hello im a student in a laptop class at school and i use my heibernate nearly every day i am hoping that this "sleeping pill" works as fast as they said it to be.

29 February 2008, 8:28 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Aleks:

Ok so whats the real deal here? WHY is it that when Vista goes to sleep 1) It doesnt come out of it & 2) more importantly why is it that Vista automatically goes to sleep every 15 mins like clock work? it is very frustrating watching vista go to sleep while im in the middle of something and nothing will wake it up I have to reboot my machine every time? PLEASE HELP....

29 February 2008, 8:28 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Anonymous:

LOL. What do you have to do to get Vista to sleep in the first place? I have a brand new PC and obviously M$' programmers forgot how to use ACPI. All the sleep button does is lock Vista and make it sit there on the login screen.

29 February 2008, 8:33 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

NADEEM:

To. Mr. James Bannan.
it seems that u r really paranoid. why?
beacuse u dont try hibernate...
while i never use to get my system shutdown (except when installing software).. i always use hibernate function.. an it is thousand times faster than any microsoft windows OS shutdown. maybe u dont have fast Harddisk or ur system ram is on dead bed, because u said that hibernate is slower than shutdown... i dont think so.. i m using this function from 2002 and ui know what it saves me many hours of waiting for power up and shutdown. because hibernating a pc is superfast than shutdown and start.. and hibernate also works for better cause... because the it doesnt mess up with registry everytime the computer starts and shutdown. so everthing works fine. everytime...
its my request to u atleast try hibernating function for a week.. so u will know the power of MICROSOFT. they always come with the best and better. i use linux also. but still it is not up to the mark of challenging the windows environment. and vista had already hurted linux very much.
but my best wishes are still for them.(LINUX world, i m also a part of them)

29 February 2008, 8:30 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

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