It does! What am I talking about? Anything that allows you to cut off a session you’re having, and restore it for later on, just like that. I’m talking that thing all laptops have, “hibernation mode”. The sweet part is that you don’t really have to own a laptop to enjoy the merits of hibernation. You can activate it on any XP system, with the same amount of spare drive space on the C drive as you have RAM in your machine.
I use it all the time really on my desktop PC’s. It speeds up the booting, or it gives me that impression, and I just leave apps open with stuff I’m working on. I do this at home, but mainly at work, where it’s really handy to get right back where you left off. Your cursor will even be blinking at the same spot you left it. Awesome.
Another way to keep state like this is when it’s built right into your software. Firefox does that nicely for example, by restoring all your open tabs from your last surfing session when you restart your browser. Not only is this super-handy when Firefox flakes out and dies on you (rarely, but still, it might happen), but it’s also handy when you stumble across this übercool site when you are late already for some social stuff and need to head out the door pronto. No need to save bookmarks or anything. Just exit, and go.
Keeping state. It rocks.
Photo by lecasio, cc-licensed