Question
I run both Windows and Linux, and I rarely restart my computer, once a week or a month. I just close the lid to put it to sleep or just press sleep. But whenever I see an operating system being reviewed this metric is heavily emphasized. I can see the power saving aspect of it in a large corporation where shutting down 2000 computers might save some money in the long run, but I think people just put their computers to sleep.
Why do a lot of reviews emphasize this metric as a major point, or am I missing something or do people restart their computers very often?
Answer
Because around half of the people still shut their computer down, for multiple reasons:
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Habit, they don’t know any better and don’t care to change.
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Preserving battery life.
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Reducing the energy usage.
At least for Windows, this is evidenced by Building Windows 8 blog post on delivering fast boot times. Their data is actively measured through the Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program.
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