now your PC has this thing called a
power button some say that computer
Engineers actually put it there as a
piece of Modern Art but in truth it has
the ability to shut your PC off and
power it back on again wow so how often
should you be pressing it should you
leave your PC on all the time shut it
off every night or let it hibernate like
a bear does it make any difference to
the life of your PC and who you are as a
person it absolutely does and you should
be ashamed of yourself for thinking
otherwise all right so there's various
States your PC can be in we'll cover
those first then we'll cover the age-old
debate leave your PC on all the time or
shut it off every night and these wars
have been fought over this issue so stay
tuned so the first state you can find
your computer in is the on state
obviously this is when you spend some
time massaging it gently and press all
the right buttons and turn it on so this
is sort of less more seriously let's say
for example uh when the computer is
fully powered and operating normally
running programs and whatnot the second
state for the computer is the off or
headache State I know some of this is
kind of hard to wrap your head around
but try and keep up here third is sleep
in this mode all open files and
applications are actually copied into
RAM and the computer computer enters a
very low power state it does still draw
some power because Ram is what is known
as volatile memory which means it only
retains data as long as it has power
going to it at least periodically when
you wake the computer everything resumes
what you were doing beforehand very
quickly because Ram is super fast fourth
is the hibernating State this mode saves
your open files and applications onto a
file on your boot Drive instead of to
your RAM then pretty much shuts the
computer off which is fine since hard
drives and ssds are nonvolatile storage
so when you wake the PC from hibernation
even though it had no power to it it'll
take a little longer to wake but
everything will still be there ready to
rock much faster than booting from an
off State finally hybrid sleep is a
combination of the sleep and hibernate
modes that is enabled by default in
Windows desktop PCS it copies open files
and applications into both your boot
drive and RAM then puts your computer
into the same low power State as regular
sleep mode that way you can resume your
work quickly from Ram but just in case
the power goes out in the middle of
whatever the heck was going on since
your session is also on the hard drive
you could wake up after completely
losing power or even leaving your laptop
out in the rain and putting it out to
dry for 3 weeks speaking from experience
so assuming you actually care about your
PC's power consumption I mean
electricity bills can be be expensive
What scenario are each of these modes
for well sleep or hybrid sleep is
obviously the best for when you'll be
gone from your computer for a short time
and need to quickly resume your work
it's an important feature for laptops
which get closed and reopened very
frequently sometimes you know moving
between classrooms or you know uh tables
at Starbucks maybe someone else wanted
that table you got to go sit at a
different table maybe the couch opened
up just now you got to J over there and
whip open your MacBook and type away at
your novel or whatever it is you're
writing because there's no sense
draining the battery fully while it's
idle and it's obviously idle if you have
the top closed it's also great when your
boot Drive isn't very fast so if you
have a magnetic storage Drive instead of
an SSD your computer will wake from
sleep a lot faster than it takes to wake
from hibernate or to boot the system off
that magnetic Drive hibernation is best
for when you'll be gone for a longer
period of time multiple hours or a day
and you want to resume your work still
fairly immediately when you return
rather than booting up and firing up all
the programs and individually the amount
of power used in hibernation is actually
about the same as when the PC is off so
this is pretty much the best mode in
terms of power savings and efficiency
and yes your PC does still draw a small
amount of power even when it's off
unless you unplug it or use a smart
outlet but you uh you're not saving a a
whole lot by unplugging your computer
when you're not using it and you're
adding a completely unnecessary
additional step to uh turning on your
system if you go ahead and do that one
tip though for hibernation is if you
have an SSD as a boot drive you might as
well just use hibernation instead of
sleep because it pretty much wakes up
fairly instantly it's a great great
combination there SSD plus hibernation
watch out though because having
hibernation enabled on your PC does
reserve a chunk of space on your SSD
equivalent to the amount of memory you
have in your system that you can't
access it just reserves it for
hibernation so SSD storage is expensive
you got to decide if you want to
allocate that space so now that we've
covered the power saving modes what
about leaving your PC on all the time
versus regular shutdowns you know that
question that causes Wars some people
say it's better for the life of our PC
to leave it on since the stress of
starting up and shutting down leads to
wear and tear on the components and
others say that shutting your p off
every night gives it a rest and can
extend its life since the components
don't have to do anything so why do you
have them powered on so the answer here
is pretty much as always it depends if
you only use your computer once maybe
twice a day turning it off when you're
not using it well you might as well save
some electricity the wear and tear from
shutdown and startup argument
is somewhat true although modern
components are much more resilient in
this regard with hard drives actually
having been the major concern when it
came to starting up and shutting down
and they're becoming less and less
common as time goes on for things like
fans power on time is more of a stresser
than starting up and shutting down so do
you have more hard drives or do you have
more fans which ones do you want to die
fans are cheap to replace hard drives or
not um
so yeah one strong argument for leaving
your computer on all the time is well
hey maybe you actually just use it a lot
I mean you know the Earth orbits the Sun
and components fail this is just kind of
something that's a part of life and the
convenience of say for example being
able to remotely access your computer
from somewhere else can outweigh for
many people the power savings and or the
reduction in component failure rates
that comes with turning their PC off all
the time so that's pretty much it for
this episode guys let us know in the
comments do you leave your computer on
do you shut it off do you sleep do you
hibernate do you hybrid sound off below
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