Shut Down or Sleep?

[sk3pt1c]

do you mostly shut down or put your mac to sleep when you don't need it or at night?

advantages/disadvantages of each?

i mostly put it to sleep when i don't need it, faster to get back at it when i want...

you?

thanks

john

[mad jew]

If you have 10.4.2 and you sleep your machine, it'll run the daily/weekly/monthly maintenance scripts next time you wake up. If your machine is shut down it will not run these unless your machine is on at the right time (between three and five in the morning). Sleeping it's the bomb.

[Bobdude161]

Whenever I want save power, I always shut-down. I have too many upgrades that are incompatible with sleeping and I have the patience to wait a couple of minuteds for a start-up. But shutting down is as very rare for me. I just keep it runnin.

[Osarkon]

I use sleep, it's more convenient for me, one keystroke and the desktop is there how i left it. I very rarely restart my macbook because it's on the move from my room to lectures and back frequently.

[siurpeeman]

i put my macbook to sleep whenever it isn't in use.

[ruutiveijari]

Shutdown. Everything else is just a waste of electricity and natural resources.

[SpookTheHamster]

I shut down at night. Mainly because the glowing light would keep me awake, but also because I don't see a point in using 8 hours of electricity to save myself 10 seconds in the morning.

[sk3pt1c]

so we also have a new factor, the environment :)
ease vs. ecology
hmmm...
i'd still use Sleep though, sorry ;)

[sk3pt1c]

looks like power consumption when in sleep mode is so negligable it's not even worth arguing about.
having read some articles, one stat that i saw about PCs is that running a computer in sleep mode for 285 days straight consumes the same power as running a car for 3 hours.
and macs consume far less energy than PCs, so imagine the analogy there.
Sleep mode ROCKS! :)
plus the vibrating (snoring :) ) light is uber-cool :D

[SuperCompu2]

I just shut my G4 down, as well as my Thinkpad. Both have very fast boot times so it's pretty much comparable with sleep on the units of others'.

21 second boot time is plenty fast for me, I mean my eyes have to adjust and everything too, so I wouldnt really be actively doing anything for that long anyhow.

[ruutiveijari]

looks like power consumption when in sleep mode is so negligable it's not even worth arguing about.
Yep. And you shouldn't recycle either. I mean, come on, what can just one person do! Or one sleep mode.

Waste is waste. And it's killing the planet.

[twoodcc]

Sleeping it's the bomb.

yes it is! ;)

[patrick0brien]

Yep. And you shouldn't recycle either. I mean, come on, what can just one person do! Or one sleep mode.

Waste is waste. And it's killing the planet.

-ruutiveijari

Yes, but more energy is consumed in startup than an entire month of sleep.

This is augmented by the fact that productivity out of sleep is much quicker than in startup as well.

[bellychris]

I wonder how much power is used just starting the machine up vs. leaving it sleeping all night.

[phungy]

Sleep. Rarely shut down. Occasional restarts cause I needed to run WinXP for class.

I wonder how much power is used just starting the machine up vs. leaving it sleeping all night.

I'd like to know as well. The MB gets a bit hot whenever I run WinXP but is nice and warm when running OSX.

[bembol]

Eversince I switched to Mac and read up on this I rarely Shut her down. I do restart because of XP.

[mactastic]

Sleep only. That way I can pick right up where I left off.

[Shadow]

Shutdown, I dont trust Sleep when my MacBook is in a bag.

[MacNut]

Yep. And you shouldn't recycle either. I mean, come on, what can just one person do! Or one sleep mode.

Waste is waste. And it's killing the planet.So do you unplug the fridge too when not in use.:rolleyes:

A computer in sleep mode is drawing maybe 10 watts, it is hardly enough to be hurting anything.

[phungy]

I'm confused. How can the notebook turn on, if put to sleep in the first place, if it is in a backpack/messenger bag/etc?

[SamIchi]

Sleep FTW!

Sleeping it's the bomb.

Truest words I've ever read

I'm confused. How can the notebook turn on, if put to sleep in the first place, if it is in a backpack/messenger bag/etc?

Well my MB is supposed to put to sleep when I close it but the other day when I went to a cafe, that didn't happen. I opened it and it was extremely hot. The screen wouldn't come out of sleep mode so I had to restart via power button. Once restarted half the battery was discharged. Anyone know if this is a known problem? I'm going to put it to sleep myself from now on. This has never happened to me before.

[phungy]

Sleep FTW!



Truest words I've ever read



Well my MB is supposed to put to sleep when I close it but the other day when I went to a cafe, that didn't happen. I opened it and it was extremely hot. The screen wouldn't come out of sleep mode so I had to restart via power button. Once restarted half the battery was discharged. Anyone know if this is a known problem? I'm going to put it to sleep myself from now on. This has never happened to me before.

Oh interesting. Between classes I just close the lid but when bringing the MB to campus I actually click :apple: -> Sleep.

[CEAbiscuit]

Yep. And you shouldn't recycle either. I mean, come on, what can just one person do! Or one sleep mode.

Waste is waste. And it's killing the planet.

Then unplug it while it's asleep.

[CEAbiscuit]

Sleep FTW!



Truest words I've ever read



Well my MB is supposed to put to sleep when I close it but the other day when I went to a cafe, that didn't happen. I opened it and it was extremely hot. The screen wouldn't come out of sleep mode so I had to restart via power button. Once restarted half the battery was discharged. Anyone know if this is a known problem? I'm going to put it to sleep myself from now on. This has never happened to me before.

Make sure you have run all the SMC updates. Had the same problem on a Macbook till I ran them and now everything is fine. The spec doesn;t specify that that it cures this issue, but ever since I ran it, it wasn't an issue. Maybe just luck, but give it a whirl.

[Giaguara]

home : sleep.
work : put screensaver on. never shut down and never sleep since need to keep server running.

[patrick0brien]

I wonder how much power is used just starting the machine up vs. leaving it sleeping all night.

-bellychris

I would too. But in the absence of the real figures, I did some quick math. Forgive me but there are a lot of assumptions here:

1. Let's assume the same amount of power is consumed during startup as any other time while awake. Granted, we know that startup is a very disk-intensive operation, and consumes a lot more than steady state, but lacking empirical evidence, let's go Occam's Razor.

2. One can get 15 days out of sleep from full charge

3. Machine is MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo with 85w/hr power requirements.

4. MBP will last 3 hours full power on battery (yes, that's generous, but I'm being conservative here)

Ok, here's what I did, I needed to reconcile the fact that the MBP would last 3 hours on Battery awake, but 15 days asleep. I needed to calculate the watthours of both states. Well, the fully awake is 3*85watthours - easy enough. How much of that watthours are consumed by startup? Say a minute. That's 0.0093% total capacity (1min divided by 10800tot min powered (3hrs)).

Ok, then I calculated the total time-to-discharge of the battery asleep over 15 days, or 1296000 minutes, and divided that against the 0.0093% capacity consumed by 1 minute of full consumption. This yields that 1 minute of full power = 120 minutes of sleep.

Again, this is really quick and dirty - but I think the logic holds - and I overcompensated for the assumptions to the point where I think the 120minSleep=1minAwake is actually higher.

[Luis]

Sleep. Just fast and easy.

[dpaanlka]

There should be a neither option. Because I rarely do either.

[bellychris]

-bellychris

I would too. But in the absence of the real figures, I did some quick math. Forgive me but there are a lot of assumptions here:

1. Let's assume the same amount of power is consumed during startup as any other time while awake. Granted, we know that startup is a very disk-intensive operation, and consumes a lot more than steady state, but lacking empirical evidence, let's go Occam's Razor.

2. One can get 15 days out of sleep from full charge

3. Machine is MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo with 85w/hr power requirements.

4. MBP will last 3 hours full power on battery (yes, that's generous, but I'm being conservative here)

Ok, here's what I did, I needed to reconcile the fact that the MBP would last 3 hours on Battery awake, but 15 days asleep. I needed to calculate the watthours of both states. Well, the fully awake is 3*85watthours - easy enough. How much of that watthours are consumed by startup? Say a minute. That's 0.0093% total capacity (1min divided by 10800tot min powered (3hrs)).

Ok, then I calculated the total time-to-discharge of the battery asleep over 15 days, or 1296000 minutes, and divided that against the 0.0093% capacity consumed by 1 minute of full consumption. This yields that 1 minute of full power = 120 minutes of sleep.

Again, this is really quick and dirty - but I think the logic holds - and I overcompensated for the assumptions to the point where I think the 120minSleep=1minAwake is actually higher.

good info, and also that initial startup, you know immediately after you press the power button, must also consume alot more power per hour then just the computer running in its normal state.

[NATO]

I sleep my MacBook Pro whenever I'm not using it, it's so convenient to have everything waiting for me just as I left it.

I don't shut down or sleep my Mac Pro. Ever. I have it running 24/7 but the monitors sleep after 15 minutes inactivity

[macOSX-tastic]

a good way around the power problem (for portables) have your computer sleep at night...unplugged. then when it wakes up, put the plug back in. it only drains my battery about 2% usually.

S

[patrick0brien]

good info, and also that initial startup, you know immediately after you press the power button, must also consume alot more power per hour then just the computer running in its normal state.

-bellychris

Yeah, sorry - I was trying to say that in Assumption 1, I'm sorry I wasn't more clear.

Without knowing the precise consumption on powerup, I used the average watthour. Adding to your point, I think the only single-user operation that would consume more power than startup, would be performing an SMP floating point render.

[killmoms]

I've never slept or shut down my computers at night, since, oh I dunno, 1998 or something? I want my online services running all the time, and fortunately my PowerBook and Mac Pro have both been quiet enough that I can do that without disturbing my sleep. I turn off my monitor and wireless input devices of course, but the computer hums merrily all night, serving up files and keeping messages from AIM buddies until I wake up in the morning.

[vohdoun]

a good way around the power problem (for portables) hav your computer sleep at night...unplugged. then when it wakes up, put the plug back in. it only drains my batter about 2% usually.

S

Oh, how does it work for Tower's/Desktops. I thought OS X didn't sleep like XP where you can kill the power and it'll continue from sleep. I was told with OS X if you kill the power in sleep and switch it on again it'll do a full boot...?

[balamw]

Oh, how does it work for Tower's/Desktops. I thought OS X didn't sleep like XP where you can kill the power and it'll continue from sleep. I was told with OS X if you kill the power in sleep and switch it on again it'll do a full boot...?

Hibernating is called "Safe Sleep" on Macs, and all recent battery equipped Macs support it out of the box. (i.e. not an iMac).

http://andrewescobar.com/archive/2005/11/11/how-to-safe-sleep-your-mac/

B

[Reflow]

Sleep got my vote and is winning

[xUKHCx]

Hibernating is called "Safe Sleep" on Macs, and all recent battery equipped Macs support it out of the box. (i.e. not an iMac).

http://andrewescobar.com/archive/2005/11/11/how-to-safe-sleep-your-mac/

B

I have enabled Safe Sleep on my iMac and it worked perfectly,

I was testing an applescript app i wrote for my house-mate who wanted to be able to easily switch between Safe Sleep and normal sleep on his Macbook. i.e. the walk into Uni (30 minutes) Safe Sleep while in Uni Sleep, the walk back (40 minutes, uphill) Safe Sleep.

[balamw]

I have enabled Safe Sleep on my iMac and it worked perfectly.
I presume that doesn't apply if you unplug the iMac or have a power failure, right?

B

[xUKHCx]

I presume that doesn't apply if you unplug the iMac or have a power failure, right?

B

I thought that was the point of safe sleep, i will enable it again and try it out, however my iTunes library is currently down sampling for my nano so won't be able to try at least for another 2 hours approximately and i will be going to bed shortly so i will report back tomorrow.

[PeggyD]

Actually, neither for the desktop Macs. I just sleep the monitors & hard drives. For the portables I do sleep them, obviously, by closing them.

[YunusEmre]

So do you unplug the fridge too when not in use.:rolleyes:

A computer in sleep mode is drawing maybe 10 watts, it is hardly enough to be hurting anything.

A fridge is meant to be running all the time. Do you put your frozen meat in your Mac?

Every little bit of power used counts. Think how many Mac/PC users are out there. So what do you get when you multiply 10 watts by let's say 1 million?

Even power adapters that are not being used (think of phone charger, or any type of power adapter with a transformer) add load to the grid. They each use very little power, but when you multiply a very little number with millions you get a pretty significant number.

Anyhow, I powerdown my Mac when it will not be used for several hours.

[Counterfit]

A fridge is meant to be running all the time. Do you put your frozen meat in your Mac?

Every little bit of power used counts. Think how many Mac/PC users are out there. So what do you get when you multiply 10 watts by let's say 1 million?

Even power adapters that are not being used (think of phone charger, or any type of power adapter with a transformer) add load to the grid. They each use very little power, but when you multiply a very little number with millions you get a pretty significant number.

Anyhow, I powerdown my Mac when it will not be used for several hours.

You should read this (http://www.apple.com/environment/energyefficiency/). Less than 1W when the MBP is in sleep mode. And just because it uses an 85W adapter, doesn't mean it's using 85W all the time.
I agree with those that say frequent startups use more power than if you had it in sleep the entire time. Here's what happens at startup (among other things): Hard drives spin up and get accessed heavily reading the essential OS things needed to complete the booting, the CPU has to process all the stuff it has to process (what a great explanation :rolleyes: ), and 20 seconds or so later, it's all done.
Here's what uses power during sleep: the RAM, the sleep LED, USB ports (so input devices can wake the computer), and I suppose a bit to the CPU. The hard drive is spun down and the heads are parked both for power reasons and in case of a drop.

[YunusEmre]

You should read this (http://www.apple.com/environment/energyefficiency/). Less than 1W when the MBP is in sleep mode.

You should try multiplication. Let me spell it out for you

1W x 1000000 = 1 Million Watts

And there are many more than 1 million laptops/MACs/PCs

[eluk]

Shut down. The MBP goes in it's bag. If I'm in a real hurry one of the desktop machines are available.

[sk3pt1c]

as far as the laptop being warm during transfer, make sure you don't allow your mac to wake from various external devices or bluetooth cause that might do the trick as well.
as far as the ecology claim goes, i'm still with the sleep mode.
the point is clear.
if you shut down and start up your computer twice a day (or maybe even once?) that consumes more power than having it sleep all night,
hence less power consumption.
also, to be more blunt, the minute the u.s. signs the kyoto treaty and starts making proper efforts to not polute the earth more than the rest of the planet, i will personally go live in a hut in the mountains and eat grass, just to minimize my detrimental effect on the environment.
i believe we have more important things to worry about when it comes to power consumption, and since sleep consumes less power, then there's no need to talk about this any more, innit?
in the end, the point is clear, people prefer sleep to shutting down.
i'd suggest shutting down when you're gonna transfer your mac though, just to be on the safe side :D

[greenwrangler]

-bellychris

Ok, here's what I did, I needed to reconcile the fact that the MBP would last 3 hours on Battery awake, but 15 days asleep. I needed to calculate the watthours of both states. Well, the fully awake is 3*85watthours - easy enough. How much of that watthours are consumed by startup? Say a minute. That's 0.0093% total capacity (1min divided by 10800tot min powered (3hrs)).

Ok, then I calculated the total time-to-discharge of the battery asleep over 15 days, or 1296000 minutes, and divided that against the 0.0093% capacity consumed by 1 minute of full consumption. This yields that 1 minute of full power = 120 minutes of sleep.



Um... should I quibble about the fact that 3 hrs = 180 min and not 10800. Also 15 days = 21600 minutes and not 1296000.

You did all the calculations for seconds and ended up with the correct result anyways, having made the same mistake twice. So yes 1 second of full power ~= 120 seconds of sleep and the ratio holds for minutes and hours as well.

And just to add my voice here.. I use sleep mode almost exclusively and rarely shutdown. I think given that sleep and wake will use less energy than a shutdown/restart, its wrongheaded to shutdown unless you are gone away for a long time.

[Sherman Homan]

Sleep. Rarely shut down. Occasional restarts cause I needed to run WinXP for class.

Sleep. Rarely shut down. Occasional restarts after WinXP crashes!:D

[patrick0brien]

You did all the calculations for seconds and ended up with the correct result anyways, having made the same mistake twice. So yes 1 second of full power ~= 120 seconds of sleep and the ratio holds for minutes and hours as well.

-greenwrangler

Oopsie! :D

No quibble - that wasn't a small mistake.

[patrick0brien]

You should try multiplication. Let me spell it out for you

1W x 1000000 = 1 Million Watts

And there are many more than 1 million laptops/MACs/PCs

-YunusEmre

What do you suggest we do?

[New Mac User]

definately sleep

[YunusEmre]

-YunusEmre

What do you suggest we do?

You do whatever you want. My objection is about the statements on how insignificant the power consumed is when in sleep mode. the power used may be insignificant for one person but when you sum up all of them it represents a very significant amount of power. I prefer powering down my mac for several reasons (power useage being one of them).

Let me give a little more background on this. Here in the SF Bay Area in the summer we may get rolling black outs due to shortage of power. On such days as well as other power saving advice, people are asked to unplug teven he unused chargers etc. Even the minute amount of power used by them can add up (considering there several of those per household).

[SamIchi]

Make sure you have run all the SMC updates. Had the same problem on a Macbook till I ran them and now everything is fine. The spec doesn;t specify that that it cures this issue, but ever since I ran it, it wasn't an issue. Maybe just luck, but give it a whirl.

I'm pretty sure I've had all the updates. This is the first time that it's happened so I thought it was wierd.

[UnitedRed]

another one for Shut Down
no point keeping it on all that time when i'm not using it and it'll be cheaper on the electricity bills

[vohdoun]

I prefer powering down my mac for several reasons (power useage being one of them).


I agree. I get lots of power outages during the winter, its went out 7 - 8 times this month already. I really need to get myself a UPS, theres nothing worse working away then bam! sitting in total darkness.

another one for Shut Down
no point keeping it on all that time when i'm not using it and it'll be cheaper on the electricity bills

I agree as well, considering its not me that pays the electricity bills.

I can however see it an advantage for laptop people when they are not plugged into the mains, but for desktop computers its a waste of energy if you aren't going to use it for 6 - 10 hours.

[Monica Litt]

This is greatly helpful! Thanks for your suggestion, Doctor Q;)

[fairnymph]

I just use sleep unless I'm traveling, and then I like to shut it down because I don't like the idea of my laptop being moved while powered up. Otherwise, and for the desktop, I only shut down or restart for installations, or when my web browser starts running slowly (which happens every few days-week).

[combatcolin]

In the UK the government is talking about giving everyone free "smart plug" meters, they plug into the mains and then you plug your device into the meter.

Would be interesting to see how much juice household electronic devices, including laptops, consume.

[dartzorichalcos]

I shut down my computer sometimes but mostly let it sleep.

[balamw]

In the UK the government is talking about giving everyone free "smart plug" meters, they plug into the mains and then you plug your device into the meter.

I picked up a device like this (http://www.p3international.com/products/special/P4400/P4400-CE.html) and much to my wife's chagrin, I've been using it on a bout everything in the house. So far I've been able to reduce daily consumption at the house by ~15%, just by identifying the "vampires" in the house and unplugging/retiring them.

B

[n00basaur]

Always on with screen set to sleep for torrenting.

I'll just vote for sleep though.

[Edandlindz28]

Sleep, only restart when it tells me to.

A commo guy once told me that computers aren't ment to restart, maybe do it once a week. He says that start up is hard on a computer and doing it multiple times can hurt it. Maybe thats why my dell sucked...had to restart it all the time.

[mad jew]

In the UK the government is talking about giving everyone free "smart plug" meters, they plug into the mains and then you plug your device into the meter.


Same thing's being offered in Australia. Should be good, but it'll cost AU$55 so dunno if I can be bothered...

[combatcolin]

If you switch all your light bulbs to low energy, then you in effect have a big wodge of electricity you have saved.

You could use some of that saved powered to keep your computer on sleep/standby without feeling guilty over the environment.