Shutdown or sleep

[rfisher]

Xp takes 3-4 minutes to load on my laptop.

Wakeing up from sleep takes it 3 seconds.

Can I just leave it all the time on standby with the top closed instead of shutting down at night?

[ThePassenger]

Yep. Won't do the beastie any harm to sleep away the night. If you're worried about power consumption you could also turn on Hibernate and use that, it's quicker than comming up from cold... but not as quick as comming out of standby.