BillW50 said:
Not so! Hibernating with a solid state drive (especially a MLC
one), or a slow CPU with very little memory (below recommended
RAM), hibernating can indeed take far longer. Although with most
systems, it is no contest. Hibernation is many times quicker. And
it does sound like Shenan indeed has problems with his computer.
I have no problems with the computers I did this with (the times I will
give, rounded to the nearest upper 10-second count, should show this as
well; given my parameters) - all of the laptops are fairly modern (Dell
Latitude D630, D830 and a Precision Laptop M2400) with 4 to 8GB of memory
each. None of which have a solid state drives. They had the best drivers
for the hardware they had installed and were tweaked for business use.
I timed from a non-usable to fully usable state. What that means to me is
not just the time it takes to see things come up and think I can use them -
but the times it takes to get to a point where I can do a certain number of
things, know the apps are usable and even close them. Boot times mean *very
little* to me - time to full usability (as I explained and will go into more
detail shortly about) means more. That means I can open and close certain
programs, access the local area network/wireless network and the Internet
and generally use the machine as I see fit without waiting on anything to
begin working as it was before I shutdown/hibernated.
I wanted the machine up and...
- User logged on (this did add time to the test - user is password
protected and I typed in the password.)
- IE opened and displaying the web page of my choice
- Firefox opened and displaying the web page of my choice
- Word opened
- Excel opened
- PowerPoint opened
- Photoshop CS3 opened
- My Computer/Computer opened and showing the connected drives of my choice
- Control Panel opened
Then all of the above _closed_ before I stopped the clock.
The times on the D630 machine are the ones I have handy. I did the tests 5
times each (hibernation and cold start.)
130 to 180 seconds (remember - rounded to the highest 10-second) to do all
the above from a cold start. Powered off to on and all the above
accomplished.
160 to 240 seconds (remember - rounded to the highest 10-second) to do all
the above from a hibernated state (I would go into hibernation with
*nothing* running from the above list - or at all for that matter), usually
the kicker was the wireless not being ready in time to display the correct
web pages and/or network connected drives. There was even once (when coming
out of hibernation) that I had to disable/enable the wireless card in order
to make the connection. Going into hibernation usually doubled the time it
took to close the lid on my system and walk away over a shutdown.
20-30 seconds for shutdown from an all-programs-closed state.
30-50 seconds for hibernation from an all-programs-closed state.
Yep there is overlap. Not much of one though. There is also a larger gap
in the hibernation - because frequently the machine was so busy still
loading 'whatever' from the hard drive - my test of wanting to use all the
other programs and then close them would slow down that process.
Sleep - that I like. I suggest that people use sleep instead of hibernate.
With the modern battery - that usually gives the best result. The sleep to
usability always beat the others - as it should. Of course - I caveat that
with the 'only if you know you will not exceed the amount of battery life
you have and/or you know that at your destination, you will have power to
recharge the system.' If you are speaking of a desktop, then sleep would
almost always be my method of choice with a decent UPS connected to the
machine in case of issues. Is it as *green*, didn't think that mattered.
*grin*
In any case - my experiment may not follow the same layout as yours. Mine
is to make sure the user could do/see what they wanted as quickly as
possible. Surf the web, use the network drives, open and close applications
they might use (and not just the small ones.) The network often seemed to be
the last to come up - and the reconnecting to a wireless (and sometimes
wired even) network seemed less than reliable from hibernation. I am sure
my numbers are somewhat skewed with the fact that I was trying to open/use
things as soon as I thought I could (desktop up, icons available to me) -
but to me that is more realistic - as most users will want the best response
time for actual use - not just the best boot time (looks ready...)
Also - one could question what would happen if I left all the applications I
mentioned opened and then ran the tests - who would come out ahead? In
other words - what if I tested the following scenario:
I wanted the machine up and...
- User logged on (this did add time to the test - user is password
protected and I typed in the password.)
- IE opened and displaying the web page of my choice
- Firefox opened and displaying the web page of my choice
- Word opened
- Excel opened
- PowerPoint opened
- Photoshop CS3 opened
- My Computer/Computer opened and showing the connected drives of my choice
- Control Panel opened
No closing of the applications. Would hibernate win out or would a cold
start? And I hibernate not from a 'all-applications-closed' state - but
all-applications-opened.
I did not test this. Although I would bet (given the times above and how
much more hibernate would have to then load and the randomness of the
network/internet results with hibernation I experienced) that a cold start
would still be faster on average than coming back out of hibernation.
If I recall - the precision workstation M2400 was slightly faster than the
other two in all tests. More memory, faster hard disk drive, faster
processor would account for the differences. Those were Windows Vista and
Windows 7 tests - so - realizing this is a Windows XP group - perhaps those
numbers won't be as readily accepted here. ;-)
I know most people want the 'boot time' numbers. Like they want the
quarter-mile numbers with a vehicle, or the 0-60mph numbers. I like the
long-haul numbers better - because no matter how fast or slow it boots (or
gets to 60mph) - that's not what I am using the computer (vehicle) for on a
day-to-day basis. I am not impressed by someone's computer booting in under
30 seconds if it takes 2+ more minutes for them to logon and open a web page
and browse anymore than I am in the fact they can do sub-7 second 0-60mph if
their car cannot make it 200+miles without filling up with gas and do that
for a long period of time without having to be worked on. ;-)
