A few attempts to isolate the issue?
Hey there,
Sorry to revive this thread... I'm wondering if a combination of things are needed to avoid Apple's new way of sleeping on 2011 11" and 13" Macs in Lion:
- Disabling hibernate mode and deleting the sleep image
Even though I disabled hibernation, and even though the screen comes back in 1-2 seconds for me, if my 2011 Air sleeps for more than an hour, my cursor and keyboard are frozen for a good 5 seconds before I can do anything. I was disappointed, because my 4-5 year old Fujitsu tablet wakes up instantly with Windows 7.
I'm wondering if the Air still 'searches' for a nonexistent sleep image if the mode isn't set to 1 instead of 3. I understand that I'm taking a gamble if I run out of battery, but I'd prefer the faster wakeup time (if it works, that is).
So, I'm going to try all these steps (instead of just one), and see if it makes a difference. I understand that this was posted in many forums before, but I don't think I've seen all the steps listed at the same time.
In Terminal:
1) Disable Hibernation:
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0
(In Snow Leopard, this step alone worked for me on the 2010 Air, but it doesn't help me on the 2011 Air.)
2) Remove the sleep image:
sudo rm /var/vm/sleepimage
3) Check the hibernation setting (Is it 0, 1 or 3?):
pmset -g | grep hibernatemode
4) Logout and see if the settings (hibernate mode 0) stick.
I'll follow up with updates. I'm guessing this won't completely sidestep the issue, but I'll keep at it... If anyone has any additional steps to try, please fire away.
Update: Hmmmm... During resume from sleep (if the machine has been asleep overnight), the screen comes back quickly, and the cursor is now frozen for only a second or two. The keyboard usually works instantly for a quick spotlight launch, but sometimes it's frozen for about a second, too. Not quite there yet, but it seems to be a big improvement for me over the stock settings.
Update #2: Nope. No dice. Woke up the Air today and it sat with a black screen for 3-4 seconds before I could even put my password in. Checked the hibernate mode and it somehow got automatically set to 3 again! Man, this is really annoying compared to the 2010 Air with Snow Leopard... Even my older ThinkPad X60s wakes up faster than this thing....
Update #3: I might as well make my really long post even longer! Tried 10.7.3 (developer version), and everything seems a bit better now. The cursor is still stuck for a few seconds, but at least the keyboard works near instant for me -- enough to quickly launch something via spotlight until the cursor is usable again. I noticed that some of the extra cursors (like the finger-pointing one) have updated, higher resolution forms, too.
It came with lion so I have no idea what snow leopard would have been like. 
