I use Hibernate exclusively now after I learned it uses 0 power (sleep is useless imho). I only shut down if I need to. Nice as I don't have to constantly retype my password managers (passwordsafe)) password. Plus you can basically hit the hibernate command and just walk away and when you come back up, it's like you were never gone. I use a little exe (power plan switcher-sourceforge, 7 & vista) that sits in my tray with access to all 3 basic power modes. High Performance: hd's never shut off, allow hybrid sleep, monitor sleeps after 5min. Balanced: hd's off after 5min, allow hybrid sleep, monitor off NEVER. Power save: monitor off after 5min, hd's off after 9min, (allow hybrid sleep) hibernate after 10min.
I am a stickler for monitoring running processes so that nothing runs unless necessary, including startup items. If I had my way, I'd run my pc off a solar panel connected to a battery bank.
I would play around with your power settings and see what can be done. Dell is a pretty solid manufacturer so it's got to be the pc's settings in one way or another. I think possibly the powerplan.exe (I renamed it and gave it a cool icon using resourcehacker) may not work under 10 but don't really know and don't want to find out too soon lol.
