Should I always use the sleep mode?

Yes, in fact, typically sleep mode is better for the computer than a complete shut down.

Yeah, it's fine, I only put mine to sleep. One time my wireless connectivity was acting weird so I rebooted and it was fine, but I don't actually know if there was a connection between problem-action-effect. Leave it in sleep, it'll be fine. I personally only shut down or reboot for either software updates or troubleshooting.

From experience, I say always shut down at night. If I don't shut down or reboot for a while, everything begins to slow down and things like the transparent play bar in quicktime is no longer transparent anymore and overall, it makes everything very sluggish. Also, I find that the laptop has a hotter idle temp as well.

I normally just put my MacBook to sleep at night. That way, it's ready sooner in the morning, and the amount of power consumed is probably not that different from what it would be if you shut down and had to wait for it to boot up again. And OS X is usually stable enough that you can go for days, weeks, and probably even months without rebooting--I normally do so only when, for example, a security update requires me to.

But you can do whichever you prefer.

My MacBook, according to the uptime code in terminal, has been running for 21 days without a reboot.

EricNau said:

Yes, in fact, typically sleep mode is better for the computer than a complete shut down.

Click to expand...

I always thought it really didn't matter either way; how is sleep superior?

Anyhow, I keep my computer sleeping all the time. The only time my computer ever restarts is when I have software updates. It makes it easier to just open it up and check something quickly, and is an all-around easier way to keep the computer going for those times when you aren't using it for extended times.