Turning Off Tablet PC | Tablet PCs for Dummies

Turning the Tablet PC off is no different from turning off your desktop computer, except you should be kind to your battery and get in the habit of not leaving your Tablet PC on when you don't need it. In addition, a hibernation mode provides a way to conserve battery life.

Putting it into hibernation

Hibernation is defined as spending the winter in a torpid state. Interestingly, it turns out that hibernation is good for both bears and Tablet PCs.

Hibernation is a feature that's available in regular old Windows XP for every season of the year, but it's especially useful for your Tablet PC because it helps you manage your battery power. Windows Help and Support Center defines hibernation a la Tablet PC as 'a state in which your computer shuts down to save power but first saves everything in memory on your hard disk.' The perk here is that you save power, and when you restart the computer, everything comes back just the way it was when you left - with the programs and documents you were working in open and ready to go and no nasty little rebooting sequence to wait for.

Tip See Chapter 3 for more about power management and power schemes.

You can set up Tablet PC to go into hibernation automatically. Follow these steps to set up automatic hibernation:

Use your pen and tap to choose StartðControl PanelðPower Options.
Tap the Hibernate tab (shown in Figure 1-10).

Figure 1-10: This screen tells you how much disk space is required to hibernate - and whether you have that much available.
Make sure the Enable Hibernation check box is selected.
Tap the Power Schemes tab.
In the System Hibernates area of this tab, tap the drop-down arrows on the fields labeled Plugged In and Running on Batteries.
Select the amount of time you want to pass before the system automatically goes into hibernation (as shown in Figure 1-11).

Figure 1-11: You may want to go into hibernation mode more frequently if you're working off of battery power.
Tap OK to save the new settings.

Standing by or saying sayonara!

If you've ever turned a Windows computer off, this one will be like shooting ducks in a barrel (something I discourage you from trying, by the way). When you choose StartðTurn Off Computer, you have three simple options:

Stand By puts the computer in a sort of sleep mode - it isn't actually turned off as it is with hibernation, and it will come back to life when you tap the screen. But it does save your battery power somewhat.

Warning! Some models snooze for a set length of time in sleep mode, and then they automatically shut down - you'll have to hit the power button to start up again.
Restart reboots your computer. This is sometimes necessary if your system has a serious problem and crashes, or after installing some software or changing some system settings to make the changes take effect.
Turn Off does just what it says. The power goes off, and when you next turn the computer on you'll have to wait those excruciating seconds for Windows to reboot. But you can always browse the cartoons in this book while you're waiting, so it's really not so bad.