Hibernation - Mac Vs. PC
written by John Chow on November 2nd, 2008
I would have done this video with Ed Lau since we are an “endearing team” according to CrunchGear. However, since Ed was being tortured by his dentist and is in no mood to talk, I figure it’ll be best if I enlisted of the help of Ashley to demonstration the difference in how a Mac and a PC does hibernation.
I guess it’s a good thing that Ed couldn’t do the video with me. We would have been fighting over who got to be the Mac and who got to be the PC. Most likely, it would have ended up with me being the PC since Ed doesn’t have any PC laptops anymore. Enjoy the video.
- Posted in Technology, Videos
- 53 comments what's your take?
Related posts from the blog
- No related posts
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Loading ...
Hilarious, I can’t believe the timing on that is so different. Isn’t there a way to improve the speed of Vista for Hibernation by using a USB Key?
Reply to this commentYou can set your pc laptop up to go into hibernation when you close the lid.
It’s crazy the time difference though in bringing both out of hibernation mode.
I’ve had a macbook battery last 3-4 weeks in hibernation mode. The battery lasts way longer than a pc, and I think that’s the absolute best feature of a Mac vs. PC
Reply to this commentGreat video! Hilarious…..it will be interesting to see who wins the battle over PC’s over the next couple of years.
Reply to this commentLet me take a wild guess.. Mac will.
Reply to this commentI am still waiting to get my first Mac.
Reply to this commentSame here but I normally don’t care much about hibernation as I lock my PC when I need to go for a pee.
Reply to this commentI do the same for no.1 and no.2
Reply to this commentI just leave mine on, i don’t think it matters in any case!
Reply to this commentGood point! I use the hibernate function on my comp everyday - it definitely is a time-saver!
Reply to this commentTo my knowledge, you can go into the settings in Windows and have the laptop enter hibernation mode when you close the lid too, getting it to boot back up when you open the lid. By default, this usually puts the laptop into standby rather than hibernation.
This makes me wonder, though, if sleep mode on a Mac is closer to Windows standby rather than Windows hibernation.
Reply to this commentBy default, when the Mac goes to sleep, it shuts down the hard drive (and everything else but that LED on/off light). That makes it closer to Windows Hibernation than standby.
Reply to this commentNo, John, Windows Hibernation not same like Mac sleep. Its like windows stand by. Same thing.
I made video anwser for you with demonstration stanby mode in Vista.
Reply to this commenthttp://darchik.com/2008/11/03/1475/vechnaya-bitva-macos-vs-windows/
Great video darchik.
Proves what I was saying below, read post by “Matt”.
Vista’s “Sleep” mode is super quick, and the same method as the Mac… It shuts everything off, apart from the low power to the RAM to keep the information.
I think John show edit his post, and admit he was wrong :).
A little more research next time John ;), before you go making a bold video.
Reply to this commentThat’s pretty creative!
Reply to this commentResponse by John Chow?
Reply to this commentMy PC hibernates when I close the lid… some settings you gotta play with, but it gets screwed after a number of times, so I have to reboot every couple of days anyway.
The most obvious difference between Standby and Hibernation mode on a PC is what happens after you take the power out (battery and power cord).
With Standby you lose everything
With hibernation you’re good
I wonder what happens in case of a Mac… can you even take the battery out on a Mac?
Reply to this commentThat’s how to get a MacBook in and out of sleep mode. An iMac is a little different, but just as easy
Click the Apple logo on the top left and select “Sleep”. To wake it up, just click the mouse.
Reply to this commentJohn, is Ashley your daughter?
Reply to this commentThe link goes to Ashley Chow so I would assume so.
Reply to this commentI believe so…
Reply to this commentyes i followed the link to her blog and she gives a link named my dad’s blog to johnchow.com
Reply to this commenthuh?? Wasn’t sally chow his daughter?
Reply to this commentLol funny thing there John.. Thanks for the effort!
Reply to this commentActually i use the hibernate function in my laptop
every day because i save time; therefore, i save and
money also becase time is money. Right?
Mario
Reply to this commentyeah the mac wins this round . the mac does this simple task more efficiently.
Reply to this commentGreat review of Apple in general, should be a paid review…
Reply to this commentThese type of things eventually do pay off in one way or the other!
Reply to this commentyeh, mac is pretty good
Reply to this commentmy PC gets hanged after coming out of hibernation
There are so many things wrong in this video, I don’t know where to start.
1) Your daughter’s PC is jacked somehow - there is no way hibernate should take that long to boot. Are you running the default Dell install? Be a good Dad, and remove all the crap they put on there
2) On a working PC, coming out of hibernate should be almost instant. I tested it on mine, and it takes about 10 seconds
3) You weren’t using hibernate on your Mac, you were using Stanby. Unless you hacked it or installed pmset to manually set it to hibernate. By default, MacOS will go into hibernate, but the RAM stays powered on. After a certain amount of time, it will go into hibernate mode
4) Mac sucks, so stop trying to justify your fanboyism
Reply to this comment1 - Ya, I’m sure all PC laptop buyers reformat the instant they get their new PC. I guess you admit that Windows is so bad, you need to reformat the instant you get it.
2 - Ya, and I guess you enjoy reformatting your system.
3 - No need to hack it. Like you said, “after a certain amount of tiem, it will go into hibernate mode.
4 - I’ll just say this. I used to be the biggest PC fan. Remember, I was going to replace the Mac OS with Windows? Just try it for a week and you’ll see. That’s all I have to say about it. As a reviewer you should know that you can’t say something sucks unless you actually reviewed it.
Reply to this comment1) Has nothing to do with Windows being bad or bloated. It’s not Windows or Microsoft that is the problem, it is Dell that puts all that crap there.
2) Huh?
3) Actually to clarifiy, it’s not after a certain amount of time, it’s after a total power loss. So it will never go into hibernate, unless you make it do so manually by pulling your battery out. Or you can download a Unix utility and force it to use a different setting by logging in as root user and entering a text line (using sudo to force it). Ah don’t you love not being able to choose how to run your OS?
4) I’ve tried OS-X, there is nothing especially good about that would make me want to change. I don’t have much against it (aside from it sucks that you can’t CHOOSE to run it the way YOU want), so it would be pointless to say anything more.
I have nothing against Apple or its products it’s the whole “greater than thou” attitude it breeds, and the flock mentality it has going for it. I am seeing a lot of people switch, not because they were tired of what they had before, but simply because they are buying into an image that they all want to maintain to each other.
Reply to this commentAlthough I have used both but I personally feel that Mac is a lot better, although a person who has used PC for more than 10 years might find it just a little difficult to get the hang of it!
Reply to this commentI’m lost, I didn’t even know Ashley is your daughter O_O. I thought she was your sister or something.
-Mike
Reply to this commentThat was a great video. “I want a Mac now”
Reply to this commentAwesome stuff. Use this feature every day on my notebook.
Reply to this commentActually, Vista’s Sleep mode and OS X’s Sleep mode are identical. The contents of the RAM are saved to the hard drive and power is kept to the RAM. When you go to resume, it’ll boot from RAM (unless it lost power or you changed the battery, in which case it’ll boot from the hard drive).
What you’ve done is compared a cheetah to a turtle.
Reply to this commentRegardless of what it’s called, the time it takes my MacBook to “wake” vs my old XP laptop is literally like night and day. Sometimes on my XP notebook it would never wake. This was also the case after a fresh format etc. Man, I am so happy to never have to deal with Windoze again…
Reply to this commentI got a Sony Vaio with XP that I set to go into true hibernation when I hit the power button. It takes about 10 seconds to finish. I hit the power button to pull it up again and it’s all of 10 seconds to get back to the desktop, even with the login prompt. I actually had to configure it to not go into standby or hibernate when I closed the lid as the laptop did that by default. It was a quick config though, using the power settings icon found in the taskbar.
Reply to this commentJohn, I think you might be missing something.
The main option in Vista is “Sleep”, this option will do the same as hibernate, but only takes about 5-10 seconds to sleep, and about 5-10 seconds to wake up!
This is because”Sleep” saves the ram,… and keep it in the ram.
Where hibernate, copies all information from the ram to the HDD, and then back at start up.
This takes time. I have 4GB of RAM in my Dell laptop, so copying 4GB to the HDD and back takes a lot of time.
The bottleneck here is the speed of the HHD, and not the operating system.
The Mac “sleep” mode you showed, is the same as the Vista “Sleep”, ie: maintaining the ram contents.
My Dell, sleeps in 5seconds, when I close the lid, and is back in less than 5seconds.
Don’t confuse hibernate with “sleep”. You could even see the option on Ashley’s computer!
Reply to this commentJohn, you should be a Mac spokesperson.
Although I agree with some of the commenters, WinDoze sleep mode is closer to that option than Hibernation.
Reply to this commentWooohhoooo…. You can not compare apples with oranges….
In Vista there is a sleep mode use that one and it fast and not faster than Mac…..
Mac fan boys use some sense when comparing similar functions…..
Reply to this commentIt is interesting to think about things like hibernation, as an everyday thing that you simply take for granted. I’ve been using computers for a while, and I cannot remember the last time that I actually shut down my computer completely. I guess that leaving it on all the time wastes a lot of energy, but I am at my computer so often that it would be a pain to fully shut my computer down every time I get on or off of it. Great video John.
Reply to this commentThat is the slowest Vista system I have ever seen and Matt is correct here. The comparison isn’t accurate because Hibernate is a full backup of everything to the hard drive and “sleep” just keeps the RAM powered so everything stays in memory.
Vista has a sleep mode, you click start and then the power button that is sort of brownish colored.
Reply to this commentYou are right James, the comparison is flawed because the operating systems do not offer the exact same feature.
If you’re comparing speed to power down/boot up, then you should compare Window’s standby to mac’s sleep mode in which case it is about the same (a few seconds).
Macs DO hibernate, but what they do is go into sleep mode first and then slowly copy contents of RAM to hard drive AFTER its in sleep mode so the user doesn’t know it’s even happening (can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you look at it). As such, there’s no real easy way of checking how long it actually takes for a Mac to hibernate.
Hibernation speed is dependent mainly on amount of RAM you have (the more RAM the slower) and your hard drive write speed, OS has a relatively negligible effect on speed.
John, you should write a little ‘edit’ to clarify the issue. As great as Macs are, you shouldn’t be promoting macs by using an unfair comparison
Reply to this commentI agree with the edit, as I wrote above.
John is simply wrong on this issue.
btw, it’s called “Sleep” in vista Jon Lee.
You simply can’t compare the “save ram in ram” option, with the “save ram to the HDD” option.
Vista offers three modes, “Hibernate” (Slow, copies to HDD), “Sleep” (keeps ram info, very quick), and also “Hybrid Sleep” (Keep ram, and copy to HDD, safer option for non laptops)
I know for a fact the my Dell Vista system “Sleeps” in about 5seconds, and wakes in about 3seconds.
See video by darchik above.
Reply to this commentKeep rubbing you MAC in my face eh John? lol
Reply to this commentI am waiting to win one on Shoemoney by commenting
Reply to this commentVista vs. Windows 95, Vista would still suck.
Reply to this commentJOHN CHOW! You can’t compare hibernation with sleep mode. That’s like comparing an apple to an orange. This is an invalid comparison. Vista has a sleep mode exactly like Mac, and they both can be slept upon lid closing and awake upon lid opening. Except, for windows, you have a choice to set it to sleep, hibernate, do nothing, etc… upon lid closing. This is a ridiculous comparison.
Reply to this commentI love Mac period!
Reply to this commentGood point! I use the hibernate function on my comp everyday — it sure is a time-saver!
Reply to this comment