Will leaving Windows in Standby drain battery?

**slffl** · 06-15-2004, 11:08 AM

Hi,
I starting to get tired of windows hibernation. I also use a mac laptop, and if you have too, you'd know how nice it is to be able to sleep and wake in under 3 seconds. I'm wondering if windows uses about the same power for standby mode as macs use in sleep mode? I can have my 17" powerbook sleep for around a week on its internal battery.

**Chairboy** · 06-15-2004, 11:11 AM

Yes, standby drains the battery slowly, and the amount of time it takes depends on the battery and the laptop. My Vaio can last a few days on standby.

**GuRuGoD** · 06-15-2004, 11:21 AM

my understanding of windows standby is that it shuts down everything it can (screen off disks spin down, prehiperals powered down), but keeps power to ram and cpu. But yes, it will drain the battery. If you absolutely cant wait the few extra seconds to resume from hibernate, you may consider putting a second battery in your car to prevent it from draining main battery.

**Confused** · 06-15-2004, 11:29 AM

I've gone 4 days so far with my PC in Standby (using a 150W Opus) and the car has started perfectly fine

I'm sure it can go a lot longer, but 4 days is the most i've gone without using my car, so it's the longest i've been able to test it for so far

Standby will shut off power to everything but Memory (hdd, screen, cpu etc)

Garry

**PORTUGAL** · 06-15-2004, 11:45 AM

And you have everything powered by the opus right ?

**god_of_cpu** · 06-15-2004, 11:53 AM

S3 standby mode on my computer only consumes twice the amount of power as the computer does when its off. The computer consumes very little power when its off so putting it in standby shouldn't effect your battery too much. I'm not sure how much the different modes of standby consume though.

**cadence117** · 06-15-2004, 12:04 PM

does hibernate use any power?

**slffl** · 06-15-2004, 12:07 PM

Originally Posted by cadence117

does hibernate use any power?

No, it writes the memory to the harddrive and then shutsdown.

**krystar** · 06-15-2004, 06:59 PM

standby still keeps the fans running though.

even when you have the machine "shut down" it still consumes power. pci bridge and usb still are on. my ps2 mouse still lights up on LED when machine is shut down.

if you really want no power consumption, install a kill switch

**Confused** · 06-15-2004, 07:05 PM

Originally Posted by krystar

standby still keeps the fans running though.

even when you have the machine "shut down" it still consumes power. pci bridge and usb still are on. my ps2 mouse still lights up on LED when machine is shut down.

if you really want no power consumption, install a kill switch

Doesn't keep the fans running on mine. Each setup WILL be different.

Yes, it will still send power to the PS/2 ports (if you've enabled wake on ps/2 event) and the network port (if you've got Wake On LAN enabled) and the USB ports if your motherboard is designed to not fully shut down power to them, but in Shut-down/hibernate mode (unless you completely kill power) you will still be using some power, for the wake-up events, but it is miniscule (probably about the same as having an alarm on and set. Standby will use about twice this to keep a little power to memory, but unless you are not using the car/computer for weeks at a time, it is so convenient to have a 3 second boot-up and a 2 second shut-down

Garry