suspend vs. shutdown

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So exactly what IS the difference between suspending a virtual instance of Windows, and shutting it down?
 
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Suspending is essentially like Sleep mode. When you fire it back up, it loads much quicker and you pick up right where you left off.
 
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It saves everything to memory, so yes, even if you shut down your Mac, upon restart of Windows, you will pick up where you left off.
 
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and when you say "restart of Windows" you mean after booting and re-initializing the virtual machine and restoring to the suspended mode.

So what's better doing it that way than shutting Windows down completely and exiting the virtual software before nighttime shutdown? Restoring a suspended session doesn't seem to be much faster than booting a "cold" system.
 
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Suspending it will keep it in the "inactive memory" area, meaning it should boot faster when you restart it, it will have it stored in cache too or something like that. Booting it after you shut it down completely it will need to go through the harddrive, locate it and run all required files again for it to work. If you need to do something that requires a lot of memory, but not on windows, I'd suggest just shutting it down if you aren't going to use it again soon. Otherwise, suspend shouldn't really affect performance much for basic functions such as web browsing.

I think I'm correct on this... If I'm not someone will be sure to correct me!
 
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If you don't notice a quicker booting time by suspending, then there's really no incentive to do it that way. Just stick with whichever one you want.
 

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