Putting Your Computer to Sleep vs. Turning It Off Every Day. Discover Which Is Better for Time Saving
We’ve all done it at some point in our lives to save a little time: instead of turning off our computer, we put it to sleep. It’s not necessarily a bad thing if our computer is put to sleep instead of being turned off. Each option has its pros and cons, and in this article we’ll see what happens to our computer when we choose one or the other.
For desktop and laptop computers, we'll break down what each option means in detail if we want to put the computer to sleep or turn it off completely, so we can break down all the information we have in the most efficient way.
What does it mean when our computer shuts down or goes into sleep mode?
Shutting down our computer is the option that closes all functions and applications that are running until that moment, and using it has several advantages:
Reduce energy consumption: Since the device is turned off, it does not consume any energy, and this ultimately affects our pockets. Moreover, this becomes more important if our device is a desktop device because the electricity consumption is higher than in portable devices.
- Prevents possible errors and crashes: Shutting down your computer also means deleting our temporary files and cache. This greatly reduces the chance of errors accumulating in our operating system due to some processes not being closed properly.
Benefits of extending the life of the devices: Turning off the computer regularly can prevent essential parts of the hardware from overheating, which may otherwise be exposed to greater wear and tear and may cause certain components to fail.
We can say that the only disadvantage of turning off our computer is the time it takes to restart it and open the applications we need again. If you are impatient, this can be a minor problem.
As for putting it in sleep mode, it puts your computer into a low-power state and turns off most components, but not all. This may allow you to resume your session more quickly, and among its advantages we find:
Save time: You can resume work or the task you left in the middle much faster than turning off the computer, as you do not need to open applications again.
- Reduce electricity consumption: If you have to keep your computer on all day, such as if you need to perform an important download, you can keep it on while putting the computer in sleep mode (although you should make sure to do this in your system settings).
The main drawback of sleep mode is one of the strengths of shutdown mode that we mentioned earlier, which is that this action does not close processes or services, and the accumulation of any of them over time can lead to errors. In the case of laptops, as long as they are not connected to a power source, their battery will gradually drain as well, so they may stop working within a few hours.
- Conclusion
The decision is yours between one practice or another, and in the end everything depends on your usage habits, but from here we can recommend that once you have finished your daily tasks, at least turn off the computer at night to extend its life and avoid errors, although you can use sleep mode during the day to save time.