Windows Vista Annoyances

Start→ (Sleep)

The

button, at the bottom of the Start menu’s right column, is the trigger for one of Vista’s most useful new features, Sleep mode. Yes, that’s right: one of the best things about Vista is how it behaves when you turn it off.

Millions of people shut their PCs off every day, but they shouldn’t; it’s a huge, colossal waste of time on both ends. When you shut down, you have to wait for all your programs to close—and then the next morning, you have to reopen everything, reposition your windows, and get everything back the way you had it.

Millions of other people, therefore, avoid the whole problem by leaving their computers on all the time. That, of course, represents a massive waste of electricity and isn’t great for the environment.

A new Vista feature called Sleep solves the dilemma neatly. The instant you put the computer to sleep, Vista quietly transfers a copy of everything in memory into an invisible file on the hard drive. But at the same time, it still keeps everything alive in memory, in case you return to the laptop (or desktop) and want to dive back into work.

If you return to work within several hours, starting up is lightning-fast. Everything reappears on the screen faster than you can say, “Redmond, Washington.” After you’ve enjoyed the speed of a power-up from ...