How much energy does an average computer use whilst in sleep/standby mode?
It’s only a trickle. The computer only takes as much power as it needs to keep the system in memory (just give the memory chips a little power, is all). My laptop on sleep will use less than 10% of the battery charge for a 24 hour period. With a 6-cell battery that lasts somewhere between 4 and 5 hours when running, you can do the math to figure that out, I guess. The debate will go on for the ages as to whether it is better to shutdown everyday or just put it to sleep. I’m partial to sleep because I hate having to boot. It’s much more convenient to just have it wake back up in 2 seconds than wait 2 minutes for the OS to fully load. Personally, I think sleep is better for the health of the PC, but I’m sure somebody will disagree with me. There’s my 2 cents. If you’re worried about your power bill going up by leaving your computer on sleep every night instead of shutting down, you needn’t be. It barely uses any power. If your OS and video card support sleep, I’d say use it.
