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New iMac - Sleep vs Shutdown

C

covertsurfer

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 18, 2007
579
7
Being a recent convert to the Mac I am a bit confused with the Sleep and Shutdown option. I know you could hibernate a PC but I always found issues with that so always shut my PC down every night.

A lot of people say they keep there Mac's on all the time and their up-time has been months.

Should I just use Sleep or Shutdown? What are the effects of leaving it on in Sleep mode vs Shutdown and how much electricity is used whilst in Sleep?

I have a iMac 3.06Ghz 4GB RAM
 
Leaving your mac on sleep is not bad at all, usually recommended.

It uses little power and allows your mac to preform system maintenance on it self while your sleeping.

My advice: Let it sleep.

Sleep is different from windows hibernation. With hibernation, the PC saves the current settings and shuts off. Sleep saves everything on the memory (most of the time) and shuts off the display, hardrive, etc.
 
yoyo5280 said:
Leaving your mac on sleep is not bad at all, usually recommended.

It uses little power and allows your mac to preform system maintenance on it self while your sleeping.
Click to expand...

How can it perform system maintenance if the CPU, harddrive and other peripherals are turned off?
 
TBi said:
How can it perform system maintenance if the CPU, harddrive and other peripherals are turned off?
Click to expand...

That is the magic of Apple. You know, if you have a MacBookPro in Sleep mode in your car, you will get 57 mpg, too. Comes with having Al Gore on your board.
 
carfac said:
That is the magic of Apple. You know, if you have a MacBookPro in Sleep mode in your car, you will get 57 mpg, too. Comes with having Al Gore on your board.
Click to expand...

57MPG? That's not impressive! The new BMW 1-Series coupe diesel gets that kind of milage, and it's a sports car!

100MPG, now that would be impressive :D
 
yoyo5280 said:
It uses little power and allows your mac to preform system maintenance on it self while your sleeping.
Click to expand...

?

Maintenance scripts will not run while it's sleeping. In Leopard, they will run when it wakes up from sleep. In Tiger, the launchd process is screwed up and you may have to run them manually.
 
Since converting to an iMac from a PC in October 2010, I have kept it in sleep mode with a reboot on occasion. Due to my house location I have recently moved to satellite internet service with a cap for monthly usage. I didn't realize I was getting free on DSL.

Anyway the question came up today about how much data use could you save by shutting off the iMac every night instead of putting it in sleep mode. I do turn off Apple Mail and the browser before the sleep mode.

So is it that much difference in data usage between sleep mode and shutdown?
 
covertsurfer said:
Being a recent convert to the Mac I am a bit confused with the Sleep and Shutdown option. I know you could hibernate a PC but I always found issues with that so always shut my PC down every night.

A lot of people say they keep there Mac's on all the time and their up-time has been months.

Should I just use Sleep or Shutdown? What are the effects of leaving it on in Sleep mode vs Shutdown and how much electricity is used whilst in Sleep?

I have a iMac 3.06Ghz 4GB RAM
Click to expand...

I was a convert to Mac around 18 months ago. My advice is let the iMac Sleep. I usually shut my iMac down every few weeks.

Even Apple recommend sleeping Mac's, but I cannot find the article for this now.

Sleeping will mean your iMac will be on pretty much instantly when you press a key on the keyboard. Whereas Shutting it down will take a bit of time to load up (even on a SSD or Fusion Drive iMac this can be around 10-15 seconds).
 
yjchua95 said:
More like a coupe with a sedan's engine.

A sports car would be something like a BMW M6, or even a four-door M5.
Click to expand...

Still not really sports cars imho. A Ferrari or Lambo is a sports car. A Porsche even. But not a BMW sedan even if it does have a powerful engine.
 
An iMac uses around 1-2 watts in sleep which is tiny.

For example if the iMac was in sleep 16 hours a day that would be close to 1 kilowatt per month usage (at 2 watts). If you pay $0.10 kwh it would cost less than $0.10 per month to do that.

iMac shutdown still draws about 1/5 the power so about $.02 per month.
 
Chippy99 said:
Still not really sports cars imho. A Ferrari or Lambo is a sports car. A Porsche even. But not a BMW sedan even if it does have a powerful engine.
Click to expand...


A sports car is simply a car designed for spirited driving (sport driving). BMW M series are pretty much the definition. So is a Mazda Miata for that matter.

Ferrari and Lamborghini generally fall into the exotic / super car class with subdivisions off that like touring, spyder, etc. Other Ferraris and Lamborghinis fall in what's referred to as hyper cars like the Enzo and Reventon.
 
cynics said:
A sports car is simply a car designed for spirited driving (sport driving). BMW M series are pretty much the definition. So is a Mazda Miata for that matter.

Ferrari and Lamborghini generally fall into the exotic / super car class with subdivisions off that like touring, spyder, etc. Other Ferraris and Lamborghinis fall in what's referred to as hyper cars like the Enzo and Reventon.
Click to expand...

It's open to interpretation, granted, but this is what the dictionaries say:

Sports Car, noun.

Mirriam Webster:
a low, small car that seats two people and that is made for fast driving

Dictionary.com:
a small, high-powered automobile with long, low lines, usually seating two persons.

Oxford Dictionaries:
A low-built car designed for performance at high speeds, often having a roof that can be folded back.

Cambridge Dictionaries:
› a fast, low car, often for two people only


There's a common denominator here: all of the definitions include the word "low". Another is that most (many not cited here) include 2 seats in the definition.

There's no way any definition would accommodate a BMW M5 being a sports car. A fast car, most certainly. A sports car? No.
 
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