Put it to sleep or shut it down at night?

[orangeillini14]

I use my MacBook Pro probably 5+ hours every day and I was wondering what would be better to do at night when I'm not using it. Shut it down or put it to sleep? Does it make a difference?

When I say overnight I mean like... 10 hours or so.

[Slip]

Sleep should be fine then when you wake it up next morning it's how you left it, no need to open up all your application etc.

[UltraNEO*]

Hmm.. My MBP has been on for about three week now! I never shut it down other then for a restart due to updates, or the rare panic. In my opinion there's no need to ever shut down a Mac. For one thing, the OS will automatically do it's nightly crons, index it's HD (if not already).

So far everything is happy as Larry.

If your worried about buring out the TFT,
you can put the display to sleep via pressing Control + Shift + Eject (sleeps the display, not the machine) alternative setup the energy control panel to time out, goto screen saver.. blah!
Perhaps, time it out so it'll sleep the machine after 2-3 hours?

[pointycollars]

I put my MBP to sleep if I'm leaving my desk or apartment and not taking it with me. If I'm carting it around, I always shut it off. A habit I developed when I saw several people who carted around their powerbooks in sleep mode experience hard drive failure.

[ntrigue]

Ok. I can already detect a hint of misinformation. When in 'Sleep Mode' the data is stored in RAM so there is 0 correlation to the hard drive failure.

Additionally, Apple has a daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance script that run in the wee hours of the morning (this can be rescheduled). If your laptop is OFF then the scripts will NOT run until next day, week, month.

[pointycollars]

Ok. I can already detect a hint of misinformation. When in 'Sleep Mode' the data is stored in RAM so there is 0 correlation to the hard drive failure.

Additionally, Apple has a daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance script that runs in the wee hours of the morning (this can be rescheduled). If your laptop is OFF then the scripts will NOT run until next day, week, month.

It wasn't that they lost data, it's just that the hard drive is a moving part, and in the old powerbooks, the heads on the HD didn't park when it was carried around - there were no motion sensors like on the MBP. So their HD's physically failed because of being bumped around because they were still active.

I realize this probably isn't an issue for the MBPs :)

[lavrishevo]

These scripts will not run while asleep right?

[UltraNEO*]

These scripts will not run while asleep right?

If you sleep the machine, nothing will be running.
However, if you just sleep the display, the system will remain on!
This means you can still continue to download stuff - if that's the case...

[MattZani]

Set fans to 2000rpm, close everything except transmission, turn off backlight and leave on over night, as most Peers are in the US, and have good connections. Did 5Gb in one night :cool:

Will be doing again tonight, and at 2000rpm, you cant even hear it. :apple:

[UltraNEO*]

Set fans to 2000rpm, close everything except transmission, turn off backlight and leave on over night, as most Peers are in the US, and have good connections. Did 5Gb in one night :cool:

Will be doing again tonight, and at 2000rpm, you cant even hear it. :apple:

Hmm... 2000rpm fans, in 33°C heat!
If I did that, I'll be asking my MBP for a early death! :mad:

Wait till you get 120Mb/s (synchronous) fibre in the UK!
Jee... Hate to think what kind of bandwidth caps they'll impose - here.. there are non! :)

[ntrigue]

These scripts will not run while asleep right?

Yes they will run when in 'Sleep Mode'* in the sense that your screen is black and no fans are running.

*In Energy Saver there is an option to 'Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible' if this is checked then the scripts would NOT run. You can always use ONYX/Cocktail to 'catch-up' on maintenance's anyway.

[grapes911]

Ok. I can already detect a hint of misinformation. When in 'Sleep Mode' the data is stored in RAM so there is 0 correlation to the hard drive failure.

Additionally, Apple has a daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance script that run in the wee hours of the morning (this can be rescheduled). If your laptop is OFF then the scripts will NOT run until next day, week, month.

Speaking of misinformation :p, this hasn't been the case for a few years now. OS X once used cron to manage these jobs and cron would not run jobs missed due to sleep or shutdown. Since launchd was introduced in 10.4 (? maybe 10.3, but I don't think so) this is no longer the case. If a job is missed in Leopard because the computer is off or sleeping, the job will run immediately after the computer boots or is awakes from sleep. It took longer to run in Tiger, and there is a weird sequence of events that can cause a job to be missed, but they generally still ran.

[TheCookie]

I usually shut mine down, but that's only because I get the strange striping issue in Safari after I've slept it on occasion. Just easier to avoid the problem by shutting it down.

[Balty]

has anyone heard of a waste of electricity

[SchneiderMan]

i put mine to sleep all the time, for about a year
its great, my battery now lasts for 30 minutes.. :D

[Radio Monk33]

has anyone heard of a waste of electricity

Yeah, screw the environment. As if I should be inconvenienced by 15 seconds of load time! :rolleyes:

[MojoWill]

has anyone heard of a waste of electricity

go hug a tree

i never turn mine off except if im not going to be using for like a whole weekend or if im restarting into xp to play COD4

[richard.mac]

These scripts will not run while asleep right?

in Leopard the scripts run after youve woken.

i always just sleep my MBP, never shut it down. while asleep only the RAM is powered but if your worried about the electricity use you could also hibernate your MacBook by pulling out the battery while its asleep, use this hint (http://www.macworld.com/article/53471/2006/10/sleepmode.html) (involes Unix commands) or download a hibernation Widget.

[Kyouya]

i put mine to sleep all the time, for about a year
its great, my battery now lasts for 30 minutes.. :D

Yeah, not sure if its caused by that but I also frequently put my old MBP on sleep mode and now the battery life is pathetic.

[a456]

has anyone heard of a waste of electricity

I am proud to say my iMac, WiFi Router, External Hard-Drive and Printer all get switched off at the plug every night. I'm not so good with my PB, however, especially given the time it takes to boot.

[Dmac77]

has anyone heard of a waste of electricity

No offense meant, but the little power that the RAM requires isn't going to affect Green House Gasses or your electricity bill. And I agree go hug a tree.

Don

[Apple Ink]

No offense meant, but the little power that the RAM requires isn't going to affect Green House Gasses or your electricity bill. And I agree go hug a tree.

Don

Just as a topic of interest but are you always so ANTI EARTH!

I mean, the MR staff had to clean a whole thread of your comments!:apple:

[Dmac77]

Not going to sink to your trolling level by starting another debate that I will eventually lose because of the clear political bias on this forum. That is all I have to say.

Don

[grapes911]

has anyone heard of a waste of electricity

While a computer is sleeping, it uses about that same amount of power as a wrist watch. Plus, your computer uses a surge of power during boot so shutting it down and starting it up could potentially use more electricity than allowing it to sleep.

[Keleko]

I've recently started putting mine to Sleep instead of a full shutdown. It seems to work fine most of the time, but today I had some network lag/flakiness (lost my ssh connection) after waking it up this morning. I did a reboot, and it's all working fine now. I may just go back to a full shutdown. I'm not really waiting on it to boot since I turn it on before I go do something else before I'm ready to sit down and compute.

[mrwizardno2]

I am proud to say my iMac, WiFi Router, External Hard-Drive and Printer all get switched off at the plug every night. I'm not so good with my PB, however, especially given the time it takes to boot.

You need help! :D

I can't get to where any of my stuff is plugged in behind my desk. I'd probably not switch anything off, anyway... but still.

My MBP sits on my desk at home, always on, but with the display sleeping after 10 minutes of inactivity. When it is in my bag, I usually put it to sleep. Sometimes I turn it off so it doesn't wake up freaking out in a little tiny confined space.

:rolleyes:

[Consultant]

Sleep (not screen sleep).

Yeah, not sure if its caused by that but I also frequently put my old MBP on sleep mode and now the battery life is pathetic.

That's not due to sleep. That's due to not calibrating your battery.

[okrelayer]

I sleep my macbook every night, or everytime i leave the computer for a long period of time.

I do restart it about once a week, just so it refreshes the ram and runs smoother, however there really isnt a HUGE difference in performance wether i restart or not.

[noodle654]

I put my MBP to sleep all the time. After about 2 days, I will shut it down to clear out the cache and stuff.

[JBmac]

I have a dual 2 ghz G5 Powermac I kept up 24/7 for 3 years, just turn the monitors off/or time out. I had video camera software running, but since "Miglia" can't get AlchemyTV DVR working with Leopard, I have been sleeping the PM this summer. I have it set on the timer on when to sleep, and when to wake up.

I also have a 2002 Vintage iMac running 24/7. Used to run a 12" PB 24/7, but the fan got to be to noisy. I have 13" Intel Macbook I use instead of my production machines to test things first, so I use that infrequently, and a MacBook Air which I use most of the time, but I sleep that when I am not using it. It is on, and off very fast.

[lauph]

has anyone heard of a waste of electricity

Heard of a power efficient websever+ssh server+VNC server?

oh. +notebook computing.

[173080]

My Macs only sleep when I'm carrying them around. Otherwise they're always on. I don't put them to sleep overnight, I just leave them on. One Mac is my alarm clock.

Shutdown? Only when I ship them out to Apple for repairs. The last time I shut down my computers overnight was years ago.

[ntrigue]

This thread got ridiculous. You're asking me to answer to Mother Earth for leaving my laptop in 'Sleep Mode?'

[mike21190]

Just a question about the scripts that Apple has run during the early morning hours. Can the HD be sleeping for these scripts to run? I have my screen sleep after 15 minutes and the HD after 2 hours.

[swordth]

Out of curiosity, does anyone know how much power the MBP will use on average when being moderately used, and how much power it uses when its in sleep mode?

Thanks

[zioxide]

I never shut mine off or sleep it while its sitting on my desk. I just use a hot corner to turn off the display and let it run all night. I sleep it when ever I'm carrying it places and when it's in my bag. I don't think it's been off for more than 15 minutes at a time since I got it.

[WPB2]

I shut mine down all the time. Less wear and tear on the parts ie. longer life.

[ntrigue]

I shut mine down all the time. Less wear and tear on the parts ie. longer life.

meh. RAM is cheap and that's the only thing in use when asleep. Spinning that HDD up everyday with just enough power; that would be a concern.

[grapes911]

Just a question about the scripts that Apple has run during the early morning hours. Can the HD be sleeping for these scripts to run? I have my screen sleep after 15 minutes and the HD after 2 hours.Check my other post and you'll see that they run regardless. ntrigue's information only pertains to pre-Tiger systems. If you have a pre-Tiger system, install Anacron and the scripts will run on wake.

[mike21190]

Ok Thanks.

[nyzballa12]

Put it to sleep if your not going to move it around. If you are moving it around, then turn it off

[!on]

I shut mine down all the time. Less wear and tear on the parts ie. longer life.


yes. though not for wear & tear, rather stop consuming bl**dy electricity.

good lord it takes - x amount of seconds to boot up, & if i'm at home & i decide to wander off & do something else* then i'm not using it & i'm not too lazy to use the off button. i can do maintenance when i feel like it.

*except when i'm purposely running something in the background ofcourse.


s'pose it varies in different countries but here the govt. & media like bitching at us to stop wasting electricity even just standby modes.