Sleep or Shutdown

I have a PowerBook and my wife has an ibook - both of us just put them to sleep when not in use. Except for program installations/system updates I haven't shut down or restarted my PB since I bought it a year ago.

There's no reason for shutting the 'books down..
Unless if you aren't using it for a couple of days.

aricher said:

Except for program installations/system updates I haven't shut down or restarted my PB since I bought it a year ago.

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Ditto for me too since June

yes restarting a computer is like starting up your car all the time or anythign else it really wears alot more on it. They say to never shut it down unless like stated before you need to.

i've read somewhere that laptops start using a bit of their battery supply when they are in sleep mode. which would mean you would be constantly cycling the power on your battery. here's one article, and i have seen others recommending shutting down.
http://www.lowendmac.com/pb/battery.shtml

Since we bought the eMac and the iBook, we just put them to sleep, only restarted for updates...

Espnetboy3 said:

yes restarting a computer is like starting up your car all the time or anythign else it really wears alot more on it. They say to never shut it down unless like stated before you need to.

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Yep, that's why I never shut down my car. Never turn off the engine, even at night when I sleep, or when I go camping for a week in the mountains. Although it gets kind of expensive in the long run, and I'm always attacked and harassed by eco-nuts.

Disclamer: I don't have a car, I never go camping and I've never been attacked by anyone/anything... unless you count that one wasp that became angry when I trapped his friend in a coke bottle. Uh, yeah... and I almost never turn off my PB. I almost never put it to sleep, either, since I use it to run a server.

I sleep, never shut down. I have a powerBook and an iMac at home and a powerMac G4 at work. I never understood why people got upset over apple putting the iMac power buttons in the back. No one I know ever shuts down or even touches their Mac's power button.

i usually shut it down if its a hot day and unplug the power cord. i have no air conditioning in my house and if i leave it running, by the time i get home from work, its burning up. now that were in fall, the weather has been much kinder and so i've been leaving it on.

have to say that its easier to open up the laptop and start working right away vs. having to wait for it to boot up, although the boot time isn't all that long. i guess i'm just an impatient person.

OT: Power consumption

After a pretty major electric bill last month, I have a question as to how much power something like the PB or eMac use when in a "sleep" mode.

iBook transportation in Sleep mode

I still have some doubts. I have an iBook G4 14" and I was used to shutdown, but a friend of mine has a PowerBook 12" and never shutsdown. I started to do the same and only shut it down at night. But I still have a question: when moving my iBook (to school, from scool, from a room to another) isn't it dangerous to do it on sleep mode? Isn't the HD going to have problems because of this?

Chip NoVaMac said:

After a pretty major electric bill last month, I have a question as to how much power something like the PB or eMac use when in a "sleep" mode.

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Well, since the PB can last weeks on a full charge whilst sleeping, the answer's going to be 'really not much'. I do remember reading that G5 PMs use a relatively substantial amount of power whilst sleeping, but can't remember where

Oh yeah, and the thread. I never shut my PB down, save to restart for updates, and on the occasional days it has hysterics over something.

jojobach: The whole idea of sleep is that the HD doesn't run. Again: during sleep, the HD does not run. So no need to worry.




irmongoose

jojobach said:

I still have some doubts. I have an iBook G4 14" and I was used to shutdown, but a friend of mine has a PowerBook 12" and never shutsdown. I started to do the same and only shut it down at night. But I still have a question: when moving my iBook (to school, from scool, from a room to another) isn't it dangerous to do it on sleep mode? Isn't the HD going to have problems because of this?

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The HD won't be spinning while it's in sleep mode so it won't be affected if you move the 'book.

AFAIK the only thing that uses power while the machine is asleep is the RAM so the 'book knows where it was when you wake it back up.

Like almost everyone else here I never shut down my eMac or PB unless an upgrade requires a restart. Oh, and I shut down the eMac if I'm away from home on holiday - but then I turn off all the power in the house except for the fridge...

Cant remember where I saw this, but there was a discussion about this and some said Apple recommends that you shutdown every so often. There was even something on Apple support that said this.

Havent read it myself so dont know how true it is but that is what was said.