Hi, on the Mac, we put the MBP to sleep by either closing the lid or choosing that option on the top left of the desktop. On Windows laptops with Windows 10 or Linux installed, there is no sleep but suspend and hibernation options. Don’t remember the differences. As I recall, one saves the state of the machine to RAM so it wakes up faster? This might be important 20 years ago when we were using HD but with SSD, does it matter?Which is the recommended option under Windows 10 and Linux respectively?
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Sleep on the Mac vs. Suspend and Hibernate on the PC
- Thread starter hajime
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With Windows I know sleep was to RAM and hibernate to disk. With sleep you have to keep power to the RAM whereas writing to disk you can consume no power. RAM would still give you a faster wake time but wake from hibernate on SSD would be much faster than a HDD. With hibernate you still have to read the memory contents from disk and write that back to RAM.
I may be wrong but I thought Windows in the past would transition from sleep to hibernate if the battery started to get low. I have no idea what Windows today, Linux or Mac do.
I may be wrong but I thought Windows in the past would transition from sleep to hibernate if the battery started to get low. I have no idea what Windows today, Linux or Mac do.
Never use hibernate. IIRC, hibernate writes the current session to disk and then loads from that. Even with an SSD it's painfully slow. Loading from hibernate on Windows is like loading your Mac after it turned itself off from low battery (Apple's equivalent of hibernate mode). The restored session is achingly laggy.
Sleep options - yeah, just saves to RAM. However from Windows 8 onwards, even the "shut down" option goes into an extended hibernate mode. That's how Windows 8+ gets such fast boot (essentially, by cheating as it's never a proper "cold boot"). Occasionally this causes black screen booting, especially after a dodgy Windows Update. You'd then need to do a static power drain on a laptop, or on a desktop just try a power on/off loop until it hopefully takes you to recovery options.
You can disable this via:
1) Windows key + R
2) powercfg.cpl
3) Choose what power button does (left hand side)
4) Change settings that are currently unavailable
5) Uncheck "turn on fast startup"
Though more often than not it's okay.
Sleep options - yeah, just saves to RAM. However from Windows 8 onwards, even the "shut down" option goes into an extended hibernate mode. That's how Windows 8+ gets such fast boot (essentially, by cheating as it's never a proper "cold boot"). Occasionally this causes black screen booting, especially after a dodgy Windows Update. You'd then need to do a static power drain on a laptop, or on a desktop just try a power on/off loop until it hopefully takes you to recovery options.
You can disable this via:
1) Windows key + R
2) powercfg.cpl
3) Choose what power button does (left hand side)
4) Change settings that are currently unavailable
5) Uncheck "turn on fast startup"
Though more often than not it's okay.
I can't speak for Linux, having never used it, but in Windows 10 you do have sleep as an option. Go to Settings--Power & Sleep. Sleep will be your default behavior, but you can change settings for what happens when you press the power button, close the lid, etc.
In the Power & Sleep tab, click on Additional Power Settings. In the box that appears select "Choose what the power buttons do."
Here you will find options for Power Button, Sleep Button and Close the Lid. Those can be fine-tuned for AC and Battery and options vary for each button. For example for the Power Button choices are Do Nothing, Sleep, Hibernate, Shut Down, Turn off the Display. For closing the lid the Turn off the Display option is missing, probably because it turns it off anyway.
There is also a box you can check to have hibernate added to the power menu.
Hibernate is similar to sleep, except rather than open documents and applications being saved to RAM, they are saved to your hard drive. With lightning-fast SSD's, I think the distinction is far less minimal than it used to be.
I believe you are correct. I have had my battery go completely dead on me before and it still recovered open files, etc. from disk.
Does suspend drain more power from a laptop since it is still on but uses lower power.
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If I want a laptop to behave like a MBP (is MBP's power management good enough for Windows and Linux to model?), which set of options do you recommend?
On the Thinkpad X1 Extreme, sometimes the LED on the button is on all the time but sometimes it is pulsing slowly. What does each represents?
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If I want a laptop to behave like a MBP (is MBP's power management good enough for Windows and Linux to model?), which set of options do you recommend?
On the Thinkpad X1 Extreme, sometimes the LED on the button is on all the time but sometimes it is pulsing slowly. What does each represents?
LED constantly on means the system's still running. If the LED's on when you've shut the machine down, this means it's still shutting down (even if the screen itself has gone black).
A slow pulse means it's in sleep mode.
Let Windows decide and don't worry about it, SSD's are more than durable enough and those talking about speed simply need newer hardware...
For me the major difference is a PC will retain it's battery life a Mac will drain the battery, needlessly being connected. It's not worth worrying about, W10 will drop to sleep and then to hibernation, for most users on modern hardware this will be transparent...
My only change is to set the system to sleep after 3 hours when on AC power, everything else is at default. The notebook hibernates and resumes flawlessly, as have it's predecessors under W10.
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For me the major difference is a PC will retain it's battery life a Mac will drain the battery, needlessly being connected. It's not worth worrying about, W10 will drop to sleep and then to hibernation, for most users on modern hardware this will be transparent...
My only change is to set the system to sleep after 3 hours when on AC power, everything else is at default. The notebook hibernates and resumes flawlessly, as have it's predecessors under W10.
Q-6
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The Lenovo X1 Series uses a new sleeping state (Windows Modern Standby) instead of the traditional S3 sleep state. This state is apparently not supported by Linux.
Perhaps Hibernate would work as an alternative or there is a lengthy workaround here....
https://delta-xi.net/#056
Again, I don’t use Linux so no idea about the specifics
My Surface Book pretty much mimics the way Apple does it. It was configured that way out of the box.
Course the lid (or tap the power button) and it goes to sleep like the Mac. Open the lid and it's awake instantly. After 6 hours of sleep (though I shortened it to 5), it goes in to hibernate mode, similar to the Mac when power gets low, to conserve battery.
My machine barely uses any power (way less than 1% per hour) in sleep.
Didn't have to mess with it at all. Just works.
Course the lid (or tap the power button) and it goes to sleep like the Mac. Open the lid and it's awake instantly. After 6 hours of sleep (though I shortened it to 5), it goes in to hibernate mode, similar to the Mac when power gets low, to conserve battery.
My machine barely uses any power (way less than 1% per hour) in sleep.
Didn't have to mess with it at all. Just works.
Are you still enjoying the Surface Book 2? I really like the look of them and the screen looks good. Any cons? Or has it been all Pro so far?
Yeah, its actually been great. No software or hardware issues. No blue screens. No issues with the dGPU dropping off line, weird CPU throttling or any of the other issues that have been reported. Not sure if its because I've been very, very conservative & careful about what apps I install, or what... But it's been great.
There's a few QA issues with Windows 10 where there's some UX inconsistencies, and v1809 (the October update) has a couple bugs (but no data loss as some people experienced), but it's not like Apple hasn't had similar issues in the past. No showstopper issues, fortunately.
Still giggle every time I detach the display and walk away from the base with pen in hand, yet still have full desktop versions of Word, EndNote, Chrome and others.
I had not heard of any of the other issues you had mentioned. Pretty much most of the reviews I had read gave it pretty rave reviews other than one issue which was that when the slider is set to "Best Performance" and the device was really pushed (such as heavy gaming,) it could discharge somewhat even while plugged in. Have you noticed any issue with that? Or has that been solved via firmware?
Aside from that only some minor niggles like the display only being 71% AdobeRGB and how supposedly as a result it would be such a poor choice for photographers. Looks like Colby Brown and Blair Bunting figured out how to make that work though. Some of Colby's sample photos edited on the SB are amazing.
https://www.colbybrownphotography.com/gear-review-photographers-take-microsoft-surface-book/
http://blog.blairbunting.com/microsoft-surface-book-2/
and Photographytalk loved the original...
https://www.photographytalk.com/pho...ew-surface-book-is-a-photographer-s-best-tool
Not sure if the color range of the display has been improved from the original Surface Book in that first article to the Surface Book 2, but I certainly have no complaints (not a photographer though). Grayscale has been excellent from what I can tell, which is what matters most to me.I had not heard of any of the other issues you had mentioned. Pretty much most of the reviews I had read gave it pretty rave reviews other than one issue which was that when the slider is set to "Best Performance" and the device was really pushed (such as heavy gaming,) it could discharge somewhat even while plugged in. Have you noticed any issue with that? Or has that been solved via firmware?
Aside from that only some minor niggles like the display only being 71% AdobeRGB and how supposedly as a result it would be such a poor choice for photographers. Looks like Colby Brown and Blair Bunting figured out how to make that work though. Some of Colby's sample photos edited on the SB are amazing.
https://www.colbybrownphotography.com/gear-review-photographers-take-microsoft-surface-book/
http://blog.blairbunting.com/microsoft-surface-book-2/
and Photographytalk loved the original...
https://www.photographytalk.com/pho...ew-surface-book-is-a-photographer-s-best-tool
I think the battery drain issue is with the 15" model when running games that hit 100% on the CPU and GPU. The included 100 watt power supply can't keep up, so the battery will slowly discharge.
I haven't read that it happens on the 13" model since the GPU is lower power (2GB GeForce 1050 on the 13", 6GB 1060 on the 15"). I don't play games, so I don't know first hand if it happens, but it definitely hasn't on the two medical imaging apps I use that make use of the dGPU.
The complaints about Windows losing communication with the dGPU after re-attaching the display are posted on Reddit, but not really sure how overblown they are or not. Or if it's people trying to add nVidia gaming drivers to the SB instead of the default Microsoft SB display drivers. Either way, hasn't yet happened to me.
I never had a problem with my 1 Gen Surface Book, I'll definitely get another if I have the need great notebook's.
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I have looked at them in the Microsoft store a number of times and as much as I like my Surface Pro, I have to think I would enjoy one of those. The display looks great, keyboard is nice, touchpad may be among the best of the non-Apple ones. Battery life crazy good.
Surface Books Touchpad is best I've used or tried on a Windows notebook, Keyboard also excellent. My daughter snagged my old Surface Book and she has zero issues with it. I'd like to try a 15" equally my need with a Surface is far more focused towards the new Surface or even the GO, with portability being in mind.
Q-6
Go looks like a nice compact device. If I hadn't just purchased the Pro last year, I would definitely have a look at one. The Pro is definitely my go-to lightweight device for travel and portability. It fits in the motorcycle panniers, seat back magazine pouch on aircraft, car door compartments, etc. and can be charged with a 12v "magsafe-like" charger. Awesome
But a 15" Surface Book 2 still keeps calling me. I like the looks, I like the design. Also maybe in part because I have become so accustomed to the Pro and also because I don't use it much for gaming or movies, I have also really come to favor the 3:2 display ratio over Apples 16:10 or the common 16:9
Go looks like a nice compact device. If I hadn't just purchased the Pro last year, I would definitely have a look at one. The Pro is definitely my go-to lightweight device for travel and portability. It fits in the motorcycle panniers, seat back magazine pouch on aircraft, car door compartments, etc. and can be charged with a 12v "magsafe-like" charger. Awesome
But a 15" Surface Book 2 still keeps calling me. I like the looks, I like the design. Also maybe in part because I have become so accustomed to the Pro and also because I don't use it much for gaming or movies, I have also really come to favor the 3:2 display ratio over Apples 16:10 or the common 16:9
Certainly prefer 3:2 in smaller format devices, 16:9 is ok on bigger hardware. Likely to be a tertiary devices so edging towards the GO, although the new Surface still appeals as it's a lot more capable, nor massively bigger.
For heavy lifting and primary work I've got a couple of 17.3" notebooks with the newer hex core offering basically desktop performance in a sub 3Kg package. Surface GO is likely enough as it's only replacing a 12" Retina MacBook.
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