Apple is promising it to us again: You can basically turn your computer off, and when you come back you can pretty much instantly resume what you're up to. Things will reappear, maybe you'll need to enter your password, and there you go.
Microsoft has also been promising this for years, and various Linux distributions have been making similar promises.
What computer users get, however, typically falls short when certain problems become common:
- System resume fails, crashing the computer.
- Resume takes almost as long as startup.
- Users aren't sure whether they should "hibernate" or "sleep," because they don't understand the difference.
- The system is unstable after resume.
- If the computer doesn't automatically switch to hibernation from sleep mode when losing battery life, data may be lost when the power finally runs out.
