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Is it bad to constantly take a Powerbook in and out of sleep mode?

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dferigmu

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Is it better to put my PB to sleep for a couple hours, then wake it to use it and then put it back to sleep, or is it better to simply let it run with the screen saver all day and only put it to sleep at night or when I don't use it for a longer period of time? Is it bad to go in and out of sleep mode a couple times a day?

Also, how long is it good to go before letting the PB shut down for the night? Right now I just put it to sleep every night and shut it off once a week on the week-end.
 
Sleep mode is fine. It will not cause any problems. Personally I leave my PowerBook in sleep mode whenever I'm not using it. I don't bother rebooting at weekends either...
 
I never shut down my PowerBook completely. It goes into sleep mode several times a day, usually 5-8. I've been doing this for over a year and I haven't had any problems, I don't see why there would be.
 
dferigmu said:
Is it better to put my PB to sleep for a couple hours, then wake it to use it and then put it back to sleep, or is it better to simply let it run with the screen saver all day and only put it to sleep at night or when I don't use it for a longer period of time? Is it bad to go in and out of sleep mode a couple times a day?

Also, how long is it good to go before letting the PB shut down for the night? Right now I just put it to sleep every night and shut it off once a week on the week-end.
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I'd say what you're doing now sounds fine. I wouldn't suggest you leave it on all day long with the screensaver running, unless the computer is doing something in the background, for the reason that TFT panels only have a finite life, and tend to get dimmer as they get older.

Therefore, if you only use the Book when you actually want to do something with it, and sleep at most other times, this will ensure the longest life out of the screen. A restart about once a week seems to work well for my iBook, ensuring that virtual memory gets freed-up properly.
 
If you need the laptop to be on, but you are not using it (eg bittorrent dl overnight), go into energy saver and turn the screen off.

If it is not being used at all, i usually have my mac on sleep.
 
Dunepilot said:
I'd say what you're doing now sounds fine. I wouldn't suggest you leave it on all day long with the screensaver running, unless the computer is doing something in the background, for the reason that TFT panels only have a finite life, and tend to get dimmer as they get older.

Therefore, if you only use the Book when you actually want to do something with it, and sleep at most other times, this will ensure the longest life out of the screen. A restart about once a week seems to work well for my iBook, ensuring that virtual memory gets freed-up properly.
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Oh yeah, I have it set up so my screen goes to the flurry screen saver in three minutes and the screen shuts off in 10 minutes.
 
Sleep itself will not have any adverse affects on your mac. However, putting your Mac to sleep also shuts down the hard drive. And I personally do not like constantly spinning up/down my hard drive several times a day, as that process is the most stressful on the drive and can wear it out quicker or cause it to fail. This is why instead of putting my Mac to sleep at night, I just leave it running 24/7. It also lets those great maintenence scripts to run during the night 🙂
 
Jigglelicious said:
Sleep itself will not have any adverse affects on your mac. However, putting your Mac to sleep also shuts down the hard drive. And I personally do not like constantly spinning up/down my hard drive several times a day, as that process is the most stressful on the drive and can wear it out quicker or cause it to fail. This is why instead of putting my Mac to sleep at night, I just leave it running 24/7. It also lets those great maintenence scripts to run during the night 🙂
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Yeah, that's why I was wondering. So is it better to only put it to sleep if you won't use it for a while? And in between, just put the display to sleep?
 
Yeah but you got a catch 22, because notebook drives are not like server drives, they're not really designed to run round-the-clock, all though some people do it.

I'd recommend running your machine during the day, and putting it to sleep at night before going to bed.
 
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