[beagle3]

It’s my home computer. It’s there to be used intermittently when needed at random times. It sleeps drawing almost zero power. Why should I shut it down?

Shutdown takes 20 seconds. Startup requires the FileVault password, then 20-30 seconds, then a login, then another 20-30 seconds until desktop is usable (and a few more until Firefox is).

If this was my work computer, it wouldn’t be so inconvenient to restart / shutdown once a day. But for what reason?

[GTP]

I guess that the main difference then is that I have to wait less to boot my machine. Did you consider hibernation? It would be a bit slower than sand-by, but then it would draw exactly zero power.

[beagle3]

The startup/shutdown time is possibly explained by being an 2013 machine, but I have little reason to replace it right now - it’s only 8GB, old slow CPU (by modern standards), old slow SSD - but it does Firefox, thunderbird, the occasional Python script and a few more things perfectly well.

I’ll replace it when it breaks.

With respect to power draw - there is no simple way to force hibernation on Catalina AFAIK, but the power draw in sleep is minuscule - it hardly registers on my wattmeter (and e.g. it loses only 2-3% percent per day of battery while sleeping).