How do Mac laptops behave as far as sleep modes?

[Scorch07]

I am planning to buy a MBP this week but, naturally I want to be prepared for it. I'm not foreigner to Macs, I know more about the OS than your average user, but I've never had a Mac laptop. My main question is about "sleep" mode. What happens when the close the lid, etc? I want to know how it behaves compared to my old Windows laptop so I don't go off and leave and come back to find the battery dead. If someone would be so gracious as to describe what actions do what as far as low power modes and how much battery they save (i.e. how long it takes to cause what % discharge) that would be simply amazing.

Just to help on what I'm talking about, and what to compare it to, when I close the lid it goes into sleep mode, but I haven't ever really gauged how much power it uses in this state. It wakes back up when the lid is opened. When the power button is clicked once it hibernates, which uses no power at all but still starts back up much faster than a fresh power-up. I don't think it has been fully turned off for quite some time.

Thanks again for your help!

 

[one1]

You close it, it goes to sleep, you open it, it wakes up. No tricks.

Uses no real power at all. I used 3% of power during a 16 hour sleep last week.

 

[Scorch07]

You close it, it goes to sleep, you open it, it wakes up. No tricks.

Uses no real power at all. I used 3% of power during a 16 hour sleep last week.

Awesome, sounds good. Thanks!

 

[displaced]

OS X rolls 'Hibernate' and 'Sleep' into one function.

Sleep alone will result in loss of current data in RAM should power be lost. Hibernate preserves the current state by writing it out to the hard disk before turning off. As you've noted, with Windows, this results in slower restoration.

On Mac laptops, closing the lid causes the machine to write out a hibernation file to disk, but then goes into Sleep mode only. So, the machine can still start back up instantly even though it's also done a 'hibernation' to protect it from power loss.

Of course, in this sleep state, power is still consumed. However, I've left my machine in sleep for over 24 hours without the battery being entirely depleted (I've not really measured this - I'm afraid I can only offer an anecdotal 'it doesn't cause me problems').

 

[QuarterSwede]

Sleep actually works on Macs. Close lid it shuts down quickly, open lid and as soon as you can get your hands on the track pad it's read to rock and roll. Plus sleep barely uses any power. I left my 12" PowerBook (PB) on sleep for 1 week before it died and thanks to safe sleep when I powered it back up it read my data from the disk and I was back to where I was in less than 10 seconds. It's lovely.

 

[one1]

The only thing I could think of it using power on is if you have automated tasks that would run at a certain time. Otherwise it'll stay asleep.

 

[CJRhoades]

It uses an extremely small amount of power. I've had mine asleep for 1 week. It only dropped 13% of the battery in that time.