I stopped shutting down my mac and...

[cooky560]

Following advice in my last thread about start-ups on here I have decided to just put my mac to sleep at night instead. While this has made the experience much more pleasurable, it's seemed to have a (very) negative performance impact on my wireless keyboard which seems to now be losing 3% power (or more in worst cases) each day. My immediate guess as to why is that the iMac is keeping the bluetooth connection open to listen for "wake up" keystrokes, hence keeping the keyboard powered up, so after a long winding story, my question is:

1. Is my theory correct?
2. If yes, how can I stop this before I come home one night and have no keyboard?

 

[maflynn]

I don't think the mac is keeping the connection open but rather the keyboard is searching for the computer, so it keeps polling for a response.

 

[Gav2k]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

Just hold the button on the keyboard when you are finished

 

[mstrze]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

Just hold the button on the keyboard when you are finished

I don't know what this means???

To the OP: I do not shutdown my Mac at night and have been 'sleeping it' for the better part of 20 years I'd guess. I currently have a Mini with Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. I must admit I do not check the battery at all and couldn't begin to tell you how much it loses each day, but I generally have to change batteries every 3 months or so because that is the point at which the iMac will warn me that the battery is low.

Based on your findings (-3% a day), you will have 4 weeks or bettery life, which is certainly reasonable assuming you do a lot of typing...I don't.

 

[cooky560]

Well while messing around with Bluetooth settings I found this

Would this help in any way or is it a red herring

 

[MonkeySee....]

Do what Gav2k suggested. The power button should be on the right of your keyboard.

 

[John T]

Well while messing around with Bluetooth settings I found this

Image

Would this help in any way or is it a red herring

The "allow bluetooth devices...." box can be ticked for the reason stated.

When your computer goes to sleep, so will the bluetooth mouse and keyboard.

 

[daneoni]

Wireless KB/Mice should go into low power mode when inactive.

 

[cooky560]

Wireless KB/Mice should go into low power mode when inactive.

This however doesn't explain why the battery life of the keyboard since I started using sleep mode as opposed to standard mode has decreased significantly

 

[dangerfish]

Something is amiss. I NEVER shut my computers down and my KB and Trackpad will run for 4-6 months on a single set of batteries. Unfortunately, I can't offer any suggestions on why this is happening to you.

 

[gnagy]

Something is amiss. I NEVER shut my computers down and my KB and Trackpad will run for 4-6 months on a single set of batteries. Unfortunately, I can't offer any suggestions on why this is happening to you.

I never shut my computers down, and I even have sleep mode disabled. My iMac has the crashing issue with sleep, so I don't even put it in sleep anymore. I just have the displays go dark after 15 minutes.

Keyboard and mouse lasts about a month for me as well. It's not a big deal if you have rechargeable batteries. I always have new ones waiting.

 

[HBOC]

I never EVER EVER turn off my iMac (had several MBPs before and never turned them off) or even put it to "sleep", and my keyboard is on the initial batteries. I bought this iMac 5/26/11. The MM goes through batteries more often, but that is expected.

I wonder if the batteries you are using are going bad?

 

[WickedStealthy]

What you can do. Switch of your keyboard and mouse and then the iMac go to sleep or force it by pushing the power button. What I have seen is that you need to wait a moment as the iMac seems to wake up after the connections to the keyboard/mouse are lost.

I only sleep the iMac wen I'm still planning to do something. But in the evening I shut it down and even remove power (domotics)

But an SSD is a blessing for this. Boot times are short ...

I'm currently on 81% of the keyboard and 17% on the mouse after a month use now ...

 

[mac-ho]

I have the Trackpad, Magic Mouse, Wireless Keyboard, Apple Keyboard with Numeric. Was tired of watching battery gauges, messing with bluetooth +++!! I now use the old Apple Numeric Keyboard. (M9034LL/A) The full sized one for a friggen Full Sized iMac!! I use the WIRED Apple mouse with scroll wheel.(Optical) I put the iMac to sleep. It fires up in less than 3 seconds. I monitored my Electric Usage, and could not detect a rise in usage. Of course I have had Zero problems. I even have a Optical mouse. (The old one without scroll) in the second USB Port in the keyboard. It is on a slide-out shelf in my desk. I can lean back in my chair,without hovering over a trackpad, and read a newspaper,etc. It works perfectly. I will replace it with one with the scroll wheel later. Problem Free is easy to get used to!!

 

[mstrze]

This however doesn't explain why the battery life of the keyboard since I started using sleep mode as opposed to standard mode has decreased significantly

Although you have yet to have to replace your batteries, so maybe you are focusing your energy on something that is not even a problem. Like I have said, I could not even begin to tell you how much battery is used up each day on my keyboard, I just use it until it tells me the batteries are low and then I change them...about every 3 months or so.

I bet that if you stop eyeing the battery indicator on your keyboard every day and just use your computer you might just find you need batteries some 3 or 4 months after the last time you put them in.