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carry it while in sleep mode ?

P

poGue

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 4, 2007
6
0
hello fellow mac-lovers !

just a question , i've got a macbook santarosa. sometimes i just close the lid , mac goes into sleep mode, then i carry it to work or wherever i go.. i mean i DO NOT switch it off via the power button.

is it safe for its hardware , escpecially hdd to do so ? or should i switch it off pressing the on/off button then carry it ?

poGue.
 
Theres really no need to. I regularly sleep mine instead of shutting it down. Depends how precious the 1 or 2 percent drop in battery is to you.
 
I do that all the time with my MBP, and it doesn't seem to do any harm. Take the usual amount of care -- don't drop it, get it wet, throw it in front of a bus, etc., and you'll be fine.
 
I carry mine in sleep mode all the time, if you really want you can put your MB into deep sleep or safe sleep this is like window hibernation mode, i.e. it saves the state of the computer to the hard drive and then powers off. You can do this quickly with Deep Sleep widget.
 
This is a good question. I am a recent convert, and I have been told from various sources that it's ok to just let the mac to sleep and carry it around. So that is precisely what I do. I take it everywhere and never shut it off fully.

Hopefully I haven't been misinformed.
 
9 months of sleep/waking a lot thoughout the day and there is no problem. It is fine, as everything is turned off except the small bit of current in the RAM to keep track of things, but fans and hdd are off, which in my view are the only things that would be bothered.
 
Yes!

One of the great features of mac laptops...I'm on my fourth apple laptop, and I've carried them all around while sleeping and never once had an issue.

Come to think of it, I can't remember one time I've turned a powerbook of mine off in the past 6 years. Restarted for updates...oh, turned off the clean, but only then.

Sleep away!
 
The search function on this particular topic will give some really good returns as it has been beaten to death and answered at least once a week :)

But yeah, as the other posters say: just sleep it. The only problems that will arise would be if your laptop is prone to waking during travel at which you should have it repaired anyway.
 
It is safe if you wait for the white light to begin pulsating slowly before moving it, because if it is remaining steady, then the hard drive is still spinning and irreparable damage could result if you carry the computer while the hard disc is still in motion.
 
JML42691 said:
It is safe if you wait for the white light to begin pulsating slowly before moving it, because if it is remaining steady, then the hard drive is still spinning and irreparable damage could result if you carry the computer while the hard disc is still in motion.
Click to expand...

Although one would think that Apple's use of the Sudden Motion Sensor would prevent this from happening. Still, there's no need to try your luck, especially not when you know that putting the computer to sleep actually writes all of the System Ram into a page file... :)
 
I shut down my laptop if I know I am not going to use it for awhile, but I move it around all the time in sleep mode, because I am usually using the computer during the day. I have never had an issue.
 
thank you all for your answers.. just got my new bluetoooth mouse (5000 optical by m$) happy to see it works perfectly with my macbook....:)
 
Cool! I've been shutting down completely, and while shut down and start up are quick, it would be preferable to just shut the lid and go. I was worried about it heating up in a bag or something. Probably pointless, since it runs so cool even when awake.
 
Wow, wish I would have knew this before hand. I've probably shutdown my laptop a 100 times in the 3 months i've had it cause I thought keeping it asleep would damage it while carrying it. Seeing that light pulsating does get alittle annoying though at night.:p
 
Shutting down a Mac laptop??? That is blasphemy. Sleep working right is one of the best features of Mac laptops, which has been fully functional in Mac laptops for a long time.

Some Windows laptops are able to match this feature today, but others can not do that. Even if their specs sheet says so it does not mean that it would work right. I used to have a Dell Inspiron that would wake me up in the middle of the night with its hard drive spinning all of a sudden - yikes.

I fly with my PB in sleep mode, airport detectors and all. After 3 years with my PB I am still amazed by how well this works. I will take working sleep mode over 10xfaster CPU, super-duper graphics card, neon lights etc any time. Two seconds and you are ready to type on your computer, as opposed to PC people who are booting, booting, booting their PCs, instead of what they should really do, which is give them a boot. :)
 
hayduke said:
This is one of those features that seems to amaze PC users. I've been doing this since 1997 on a PB 5300 (68040 I think...).
Click to expand...

Actually, that was the first PPC Powerbook, and it was either 100 or 117MHz, depending on the model. Still amazing though, I have 4 5300s and I carry them when they're asleep!
 
Some of their friends still keep shutting down their pcs whenever they go to the bathroom and then we have to wait for it to boot up three times a day. Even though I have told them countless of times to stop doing it mainly because it pisses me off, it seems to be a habit they cannot break out of. It's a shame when switchers do the same with their macs.
 
What am I missing here? Doesn't almost every laptop running Windows XP have a "Stand by" mode? How is that any different than Sleep on Mac?
 
tmoney468 said:
What am I missing here? Doesn't almost every laptop running Windows XP have a "Stand by" mode? How is that any different than Sleep on Mac?
Click to expand...

Yes, they do have "Stand by" mode, but it does not work properly on many (not all, to be fair) Windows laptops.
 
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