Sleep mode or shut down?

[klb028]

Hey everyone. I'm loving my MacBook, but I'm not having as much as time as I would like to play around with it because of work and everything. This brings me to my question.

When I leave the house, go to work, etc for more than 5-6 hours at a time, is it better to put the laptop to sleep or shut down? So far, I've been shutting down when I'm gone for this long.

 

[Mac-Addict]

Well theres not much difference, putting it too sleep for 5/6 hours shouldn't harm your Macbook and it keeps all the Applications open. When I am in a rush instead of watching it shut down and exit applications and stuff I just close the lid and then when I want to use it again open the lid and its ready to go.

 

[DinnyHoon]

Sleep drains a very small amount of power, but I feel it's worth it to have the joy of instant-on. It won't do the Mac much better to actually shut it down, it just takes up more time.

 

[CrzyCanuck72]

I only shut my MacBook down once every couple weeks to give it a little refresher...other than that, it is always sleeping when not in use.

 

[Hmac]

My wife's 2 year old G4 Powerbook sits on the kitchen desk 24/7/365 and has never been shut down except for restarts after software upgrades. Same was true of the Powerbook she had for a couple of years before that. When she's done with it, she just closes it and the main reason she does that is because the cat tends to walk across the keyboard.

 

[pdra05]

Leaving it on sleep mode for a few hours is fine.. I've been leaving my iBook on sleep mode 9/10 of the time for the past 3 years and it's still good!

 

[klb028]

Thanks for all of the replies. I think I am definitely going to start putting it to sleep more and maybe only shutting down for extreme long periods of time.

Also - do you leave the charger plugged in when on shut down?

 

[Mechcozmo]

Also - do you leave the charger plugged in when on shut down?

If it needs charging.

 

[Akira1980]

When at home, I keep my MacBook Pro turned on 24/7. I just have the screen shut off after 20min. And if I take it somewhere, I put it to sleep.

 

[cardsdoc]

What about using "safe sleep" mode? This is a "suspend to disk" mode that uses zero power and retains your desktop as is just like sleep. The only caveat is that it does take a little longer to wake up but not as long as a reboot. By default it only enters "safe sleep" when the battery is very low but you can activate it easily with a widget or change the default sleep mode with some commands in terminal. If it's plugged in at home or work, certainly regular sleep is a better option, but I think anytime your traveling away without power for more than a couple hours, safe sleep is the better option.

 

[Sopranino]

Hey everyone. I'm loving my MacBook, but I'm not having as much as time as I would like to play around with it because of work and everything. This brings me to my question.

When I leave the house, go to work, etc for more than 5-6 hours at a time, is it better to put the laptop to sleep or shut down? So far, I've been shutting down when I'm gone for this long.

You can very safely let the system sleep for extended lengths of time. If you are concerned about data integrity in case the power fails completely (battery goes flat and the wall power is not working) then just make sure that safe-sleep is enabled.

Sopranino