When you have a laptop and you are going to get up and stop using it for a long time (for example, to go to lunch), it is quite common to leave it on and allow it to automatically go to sleep instead of turning it off. Shutdown vs. suspend is a debate that has been raging in the hardware world for a long time, but when it comes to a laptop, what is best?
There are advantages to letting your PC go to sleep instead of shutting it down, such as the fact that when you resume using your PC it will "boot" more quickly and you will have your applications open and the work you left halfway there waiting for you, for which of course is much more comfortable than turning off and having to open everything again. However, does the hardware of a laptop suffer from doing this practice?
What happens when you turn off the laptop
In Windows, once you press the "Shut down" button in the Start menu, all open programs receive a timed notification from the operating system to stop reading and writing files before a forced shutdown occurs (which would be the equivalent of pressing the button). When programs have accepted this signal, shutdown signals are sent to the remaining controller devices, gradually cutting power until all hardware is completely shut down.
Performing the shutdown in this way avoids potential problems, since a forced shutdown could cause files to be half-written and corrupted, among other things. Then, when you want to turn the laptop back on, the operating system will load everything again, and even if it forces you to reopen your programs and documents, you will have the operating system "fresh" and without anything memory-resident to worsen its operation and performance. .
In other words, by turning off the laptop instead of leaving it to sleep, the advantage is that the hardware does not suffer at all, the consumption is zero (or close to zero) and the next time you turn it on the computer will be ready to give you everything your performance.
What happens when you put the laptop to sleep
Think of sleep mode as a way for your laptop to take a nap. In this mode, the laptop does not shut down completely, although it will remain unusable and you will only see the black screen until you press any key to wake it up and "wake it up".
When the laptop goes to sleep, files, the browser, games, programs and open documents will be stored in the system RAM, which will work in a low power mode but, since it is volatile memory, it has It has to be running and consuming power to keep those files and programs in memory.
Most of the laptop's hardware components, such as the screen or keyboard, are turned off during this time. However, the fact that everything is resident and depending on the RAM can lead to problems with something going wrong at any given time, and the probability of this happening increases the longer the computer remains in a sleep state.
Shut down or sleep, what should you do?
Turning off the laptop has several advantages, such as the fact that there is no stress or wear on the hardware components, no power is consumed, and the next time you turn it on the system will be ready to give you its full performance, with nothing resident on it. memory that can weigh it down. The obvious disadvantage is, of course, that you have to reopen your programs and documents in order to continue using them. For its part, the suspend mode avoids this disadvantage and you will find everything as you had it, but the disadvantage is that if you are causing stress on the components, there is a certain level of consumption, and errors and problems can occur.
Therefore, our recommendation in this regard is that whenever you can, turn off the equipment completely (and this is not only for laptops but for all types of PCs), although nothing happens if you are going to get up for a short period of time to leave it on hold, especially if you've left some things halfway and don't want to lose track of what you were doing when you resume your work.
So, is shutdown better than suspend? From our point of view, yes. Is it more comfortable to suspend than to turn off? Obviously yes. It is up to you whether it is worth doing one thing or another, but what we do recommend is that if you are going to be away from the computer for more than an hour, it is preferable to turn it off than to suspend it.
