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You turn off the Tablet PC no differently than you turn 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 a feature that you can find in regular old Windows XP, but you may find it 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 with this setting 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 that you were working in open and ready to go and no nasty little rebooting sequence to wait for.
You can set up Tablet PC to go into hibernation automatically. Follow these steps to set up automatic hibernation:
1. Use your pen and tap to choose Start --> Control Panel --> Power Options.
2. Tap the Hibernate tab (which you can see in Figure 1).
Figure 1: This screen tells you how much disk space you need to hibernate — and whether you have that much available.
3. Select the Enable Hibernation check box if it isn't already checked.
4. Tap the Power Schemes tab.
5. In the System Hibernates area of this tab, tap the drop-down arrows on the fields labeled Plugged In and Running on Batteries.
6. Select the amount of time that you want to pass before the system automatically goes into hibernation (as you can see in Figure 2).
Figure 2: You may want to go into hibernation mode more frequently if you're working off of battery power.
7. Tap OK to save the new settings.
Standing by or saying sayonara!
If you've ever turned a Windows computer off, turning off your Tablet PC will be like shooting ducks in a barrel. When you choose Start --> Turn 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 comes back to life when you tap the screen. But Stand By does save your battery power somewhat.
 | Some models snooze for a set length of time in sleep mode, and then they automatically shut down — you have to hit the power button to start up again. |
- Restart: Reboots your computer. You sometimes need to Restart if your system has a serious problem and crashes, or after you install some software or change some system settings to make the changes take effect.
- Turn Off: This option does just what it says. The power goes off, and when you next turn the computer on, you have to wait those excruciating seconds for Windows to reboot.
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