Vista insomnia- definitely an OS issue

Sleep_walkingAs soon as Vista went gold and began shipping we began hearing from mobile PC users that Vista was causing what Craig Pringle terms "Sleep of Death".  This term fits a number of different problems that notebooks and Tablet PCs exhibit running Vista when Sleep and Hibernate are used.  Sometimes when you put your mobile computer to sleep when you try to wake it up the system comes back and runs normally, except without the display which doesn’t wake up.  I have seen this on three different PCs running Vista and lets just state the obvious, it’s very hard to use a PC when the screen is not working.  It’s impossible to even shut down the PC in this instance too, resulting in a hard kill of the OS.  This doesn’t happen every time you put your device to sleep but often enough that it can create a real problem when you are mobile.

Another common problem that many mobile PC users have been reporting since the release of Vista is what Craig aptly terms "Vista Insomnia".  This phenomenon has potentially damaging results as it involves putting the device to sleep and having it turn itself back on at some point.  This is dangerous as it often turns the device back on while it’s nestling in the gear bag and it can cause ultra-high temperatures that can actually damage the hardware.  Even the best case in this scenario the user can get to their next appointment to discover their battery has been depleted because the device has turned itself back on.

These two phenomena definitely came into existence with the release of Vista and users with computers bought recently with Vista pre-installed report them too, so it’s not a case of older hardware failing to support Vista properly.  Craig has done some investigation and reports that he believes these problems with resuming are hardware driver related and not the fault of Vista.  I have to respectfully disagree because I believe that such an integral function of a mobile PC is fully the responsibility of the OS.  Maybe they happen because of the way that Vista reacts with the hardware drivers but even so the end result is so damaging that Vista has to bear the responsibility for preventing this from happening.  Craig points out that the upcoming Vista SP1 addresses some of these problems and I say that’s not good enough.  These problems have been in place for the entire year now since Vista went gold and they should already have been fixed via Windows Update.  Why make millions of users wait for a fix in SP1 when it should be fixed NOW.  It’s easy to make an argument that hardware drivers are the responsibility of the OEM and I understand that sentiment but let’s face it, if the OS is not working for a large group of users then it is Microsoft’s responsibility to fix it, and not next year with SP1.  Get these fixes to the users now and let’s put this silly sleep business behind us as we should.

Interestingly, I have only seen the Sleep of Death once on the HP 2710p I have been using for a few months.  I have experienced both types of problems many times on several other Vista running notebooks however, including the Lenovo x61 Tablet PC which has exhibited both types of problems numerous times.

(Craig Pringle via GottaBeMobile)

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