Make Your Windows Vista Computer Faster with this free PDF Book from Microsoft

Windows Vista users should download this free PDF ebook - Vista Performance and Tuning Guide - as it discusses several tweaks that will help a computer feel more responsive.

I was reading through the book and found this particular recommendation very handy where they say that you should put a computer to Sleep as this state doesn’t consume much power and machine will always start faster. Excerpt:

Sleep should be considered the new default “Off” state in Windows Vista. When a computer enters Sleep state, Windows Vista saves the current session to memory and enters a low power state where only memory is powered.

In Sleep state, the computer uses very little power - extending battery life for mobile computers and conserving energy even for desktop computers while ensuring that the computer is still ready for action quickly. In fact, on a modern laptop computer, power consumption in sleep state is typically less than one watt.

Windows Vista also includes a new Hybrid Sleep function. Hybrid Sleep will function as a failsafe in case of power loss by saving the session to memory normally, but also writing it all to the hard drive (similarly to how hibernate works). This ensures that even when power is lost, data remains intact.

When you want to resume working, just press the power button, tap a key on the keyboard, or, on laptop computers, open the cover. Windows Vista takes only a few seconds to resume from sleep, though it can take a little longer to resume from Hybrid Sleep after you restore a power source to the computer.