There is no standardisation that I am aware of on the terms ’sleep’ and ‘hibernate’ across different manufacturers. Technically there are a variety of things a computer can do such as shut down its drives and/or its processor.

The short answer is that anything is better for power consumption than leaving the entire computer active. I’d suggest trying each option on your computer. What you want is for the display to go blank, the computer to fall completely silent, and that it can be woken in a few seconds by shaking the mouse or pressing keys. If you can achieve this you have greatly cut the energy cost of running the computer but you still have access to it whenever you want.

Peter – I’ve not heard anyone say that LCDs are less efficient than CRTs. I have heard it said of plasmas, which are thirsty beasts, but it’s unusual to use those as computer displays.

The main energy consumption in an LCD is the fluorescent light behind the LCD panel (remembering that an LCD switches existing light; you need to illuminate it somehow to make it into a computer display). Some modern LCD displays have LED illumination which is brighter and more efficient.

CRTs by contrast are a giant radio valve. They need to be got hot just to work, hence the slow start up time. And they require exotically high voltages. Ugh.

Colin

Why then do people say that modern (LCD) TVs use more electricity then old (CRT) ones?

Second, energy efficiency is of immediate interest to many of us. I’d be interested to know what the consumption difference is between Hibernate and Standby.
I’d also like to know if there’s any way one can get a scheduled function (eg automated data backups) to be followed by a Hibernate function. Would this be something written into the backup software itself or something provided by a separate piece of software? Thanks for the ongoing interest provided by your articles and radio talks.