Sleep or Shut Down

bishopsgirl

Very basic question because I am very new to Pc's and know almost nothing about them. I have a laptop and wonder should I put it to sleep when not using it or shut it down.
When I first got it I shut down even if I was not using it for half an hour or so however since I learnt about sleep from a library book I just put it to sleep when not using it even over night.
What is best?
I feel I must warn you if I get an answer to this question I have many others that I need answering.

posted_2

shutdown overnight and turn off at the wall or unplug, sleep or hibernate (better) if you intend to use it soon

Millionaire

During the day I always put to sleep as I don't know when I might need to jump on. and it takes only a second or 2 before it becomes fully usable.

At night I always shutdown.

bluboy

Hi and welcome to the MSE Techie forum and the big bad world of PCs.
As to your question I'm going to give you the classic fudge of an answer - it depends!;) ... and it's what suits you best. Shutting down and rebooting any PC can be time consuming and often just inconvenient if you've got programs running or you're halfway through something.
Sending the PC to sleep (achieved on many laptops by just closing the lid) can be very useful as you can wake it up at anytime (open the lid) and take up where you left off.

Personally I tend to send it to sleep if I'm in the middle of something or I'm likely to use the laptop again within a couple of hours but I tend to close everything down overnight.

With modern laptops the power saving for a couple of hours is negligible. (Cue the green brigade reaction!)

bishopsgirl

Thanks for your replies.
I will now shut down at night and sleep during the day.
Only use the laptop to browse the web,send a few emails and write the odd letter. Not sure how to do much else but keen to learn.

aliEnRIK

It needs to be shutdown every so often for some of the microsoft updates to work

bishopsgirl

Oh thank you. I am going to shut down at night now. My question must seem really stupid to most of you Techies but I just did not know what to do for the best.
More questions to come.