[ltp] Suspend and resume at a particular time?

[Marcus Hagn]

On 4/13/06, Ben Pearre <bwpearre@alumni.princeton.edu> wrote:
> Rather than giving a useful answer, I'll just ask a question I was
> wondering about:
>
> The old wisdom is that it is better to leave a computer on all the
> time than to turn it on and off every day.  That applied to desktops,
> and I gather it had much to do with the hard disk spinning up and
> down.
>
> Laptop hard disks are presumably more robust and get less upset about
> constant spin-up spin-down, I guess, and if you're returning from work
> and don't plan to use it 'til the morning, then the number of powerons
> is fixed anyway...  but how do things balance out?  When is it better
> to turn the computer on (or wake it up) every day?
>
> * Hard disk may be better-designed for this?
>
> * Suspend/resume rather than reboot: good (eg. less activity at
>   wakeup)?  Bad (filesystem mount check doesn't run as often)?  Etc?
>
> * Even on AC, laptops surely have much lower power requirements than
>   desktops.  Cheaper to operate?  Esp. if you enable laptop-mode,
>   although lots of GnoDE apps tend to randomly request for the hard
>   disk to spin up every couple of minutes.
>
> * Battery: good to store LiIon batteries in a cool place, which a
>   running laptop isn't.  Just take it out?  Etc...?
>

I think you summed up all the issues quite nicely. To me it looks like
there are no reasons not to put your laptop to sleep when you do not
use it. The disk spins down and up all the time if you use
laptop-mode. So it is even more disk friendly to suspend your laptop.

I would be hesitant to put this alarm thingi in automaticly everytime
you go to sleep. Next time you are travelling the batteries will be
completly empty when you need your laptop in a meeting. But maybe a
small script bound to some button or desktop icon for the occasion
when you know you want it to wake up the next day will work nicely.

Regards
Marcusn