Can somebody reveal the secrets of power management?

For my T400, XP, SP2.

Because I have had some bad experiences with lappies waking up or not going to sleep in my backpack when set to standby, I have my settings set to hibernate when the screen is closed.

This definitely saves more power : I don't care what other say, when it's standby mode, my battery appears to drain. (Unless I'm doing something wrong.)

All that said, the sucky part about hibernate is the looooong time to resuming activity once the screen is backup. I THINK it becomes active more quickly if the AC is plugged in, but in any case, I pay a high price in terms of waiting around for my T400 to wake up from hibernate.

Anyone have any tips on how I can more optimally manage the power settings?

Thanks.

 

Use S3 standby for short breaks (e.g less than two hours). The amount of power used to power the RAM for that period is likely less then the power used to write-out and read-back the hibernation file.

Additionally, hibernate is faster with less RAM as the file is smaller. This reduces the time it takes to read/write the file.

I have never had my ThinkPad (x200 and T40) spontaneously wake from sleep, so I wouldn't worry about it. Even if it does, the APS sensor will probably keep everything safe. You can also use Fn+F4 to manually force standby before closing the lid.

 

Vista and Windows 7 are more reliable in terms of coming in and out of standby and hibernate states (and several other things). I highly recommend upgrading your legacy OS if you’re serious about power management.