How to Almost Burn Your Tablet by Putting It in Standby Mode!

No, this isn’t a joke. What you see in the picture is my Huawei MateBook E (running the almighty Microsoft Windows 11) right before I had to urgently shove it into the freezer. Yes, the freezer. Because apparently, "standby" on Windows now means "let’s fire up the fans and turn this tablet into a portable grill."

Excellent work, Microsoft. Truly, a masterpiece of modern computing.

Now, as someone who’s been a PC user (and, dare I say, a computer scientist) for most of my adult life, I find it astonishing that in 2025 we still don’t have a single "desktop" operating system that can reliably do the simplest task imaginable: go to sleep and wake up properly.

Microsoft Windows: In the majority of cases, approximately nine out of ten, the system either fails to properly enter sleep mode, becomes unresponsive during hibernation, or resumes operation in an unstable state. The recurring issues of excessive fan activity and system instability highlight persistent flaws in Windows’ power management implementation.

Apple macOS: The situation is somewhat improved, with roughly five or six successful sleep cycles out of ten, based on experience with macOS Sierra. However, problems remain. The system occasionally fails to resume correctly, often displaying temporary unresponsiveness or loss of peripheral connections upon wake-up.

Linux (Ubuntu): Despite its reputation as the reliable open-source alternative, Linux, particularly Ubuntu 20.04, exhibits similar inconsistencies. In about a third of the observed cases, the system either does not fully enter standby or resumes in a partially degraded state, suggesting ongoing challenges with power state management across hardware configurations.

In this grand era of AI and self-driving cars, no one, not Microsoft, not Apple, not even the Linux community, has managed to make a computer simply sleep properly.

Maybe the true "AI revolution" will happen the day an operating system learns how to take a nap without setting itself on fire!