Why Modern Standby matters for business laptop

Written by: Ivan Chen

The MSI Summit series business laptops all support modern standby.
MSI has recently released a tutorial video about Summit E13 Flip Evo and demonstrated the advantage of modern standby.

The “modern” standby sleep mode is compatible with Windows Hello biometric function and can instantly wake up, unlike the “legacy” S3 sleep mode.

What is “modern” standby compared to “legacy” S3 sleep mode, and why does it matter to business laptops?

What is Modern Standby?

When your “modern” standby laptop enters sleep mode, for example, close the lid, press power button, clicked sleep in the windows start menu, it enters a sleep state.On the surface, it looks no different from the laptops in the past decades that use “legacy” S3 sleep mode.

However, how the operating system and the hardware work is very different between them. In S3 sleep mode, the system stores data onto memory and cuts off the power of other components to save power, but unable to communicate with the environment like voice wake up or play music, receive incoming messages.

For modern standby, the operating system works with hardware and keep the only necessary component on a doze mode – wakes up component when it is necessary, and thus makes it able to access CPU, speaker, Wi-Fi component and etc.

*The Modern Standby function may behave differently depending on Windows 10 version

Why modern standby matters on a business laptop?

In business, time is money. Compare the following scenario of one who uses legacy S3 laptop and modern standby laptop in a business meeting and it shows you the difference.

Legacy S3 sleep mode business laptop:

You just entered a meeting room, opened the lid and wait for the laptop to wake up.Meanwhile, your client entered the meeting room.You closed the lid of laptop and had a conversation with him, and when finished, you had to press the power button to wake the laptop and waited and entered the password.During the meeting, you were presenting with colleague’s computer, client asked about some information, but it was stored in your laptop.You walked overto wake up the laptop and waited again…and maybe the client remembered the password you just typed in.

Modern Standby business laptop:

You just entered a meeting room, opened the lid, logged in with facialrecognition and opened up mailthat received when you were preparing on the way to meeting room to check the latest message.Meanwhile, your client entered the meeting room, you closed the lid of laptop and had a conversation with him, and when finished, yousimply opened the lid and login with facialrecognition instantly and continued reading.During the meeting, you were presenting with colleague’s computer, client asked about some information, but it is stored in your laptop.You walked towards the laptop and laid your finger on the fingerprint sensor and it unlocked and wokeup instantly.

What’s the difference? No more waiting, secured, time is money.

So, how does it really work again?

For current modern standby setting, when the laptop is plugged into power, it can receive message since it is still connected to internet. So, when you closed the lid and pack your stuff, head to the meeting room, you are still synced to the latest information.

The moment you open the lid of laptop, the laptop is already awake and powering the IR camera used for face identification and searching for your face.

Under modern standby mode, the fingerprint sensor power is still being suppliedand is working under a power saving state, so you can just put your fingertip on it to wake up and unlock the laptop. In S3 laptop, you have to press power button, wait for it to fully wake up, then finally place your fingertip to unlock.