Poll: Who puts their iMac to sleep or shuts it down?

[Tech686239]

I let mine sleep. I might start shutting it down tho as the hard drive just failed. It probably had nothing to do with it but i just want to be safe.

 

[dazed]

I only shut mine down if I'm away for an extended period (ie weeks)

 

[bushman4]

Really don't see any advantage to doing either one. Makes no difference.

 

[CarloUK]

With an iMac and Fusion I turn off. Its so fast just as well. Its always better to turn off for piece of mind. However without fudion i would sleep an iMac

When I had my 2009 MacBook Pro I used to sleep it by closing it. Then one day I noticed it was red hot. Opened it up and it had come on while in my bag causing it to get red hot and flatten the battery. Since then I always turned my laptop off.

 

[Abazigal]

I sleep my macbook air. I would do the same for my imac as well, but my dad is very particular about this and insists on shutting it down before retiring for the night.

 

[itouch rulz]

I used to have a 2007 20 inch iMac that was always on. The longest up-time was just over 300 days - between OS X upgrades I think (it would go to sleep itself when not in use).

I gave it to my uncle when I got a 2011 21.5 to replace it. He still uses it everyday. It's never missed a beat.

 

[Siderz]

We don't turn off clocks.
No need to turn off computers.

(Sleep)

Clocks are quite a bit different though.

It's not like computers need to be on to keep data.

 

[seble]

Sleep becuase it annoys me with how long the Bluetooth keyboard and mouse take to pair with the iMac everytime I switch the damn thing on!

 

[jamesjingyi]

Is there anything bad that can happen if you sleep too much?

 

[maxosx]

Now that all my Macs have SSD's there's even less need to shut them down when traveling. Which in my case is daily.

 

[Johnf1285]

Is there anything bad that can happen if you sleep too much?

Potentially excessive spin ups and spin downs if your Mac has a hard drive in it. If it has solid state, then on, off, sleep - whatever, it will make little difference.

If my iMac had only SSD, I would probably still leave it on always, but sleep would be more of an option.

My MacBook Air sleeps whenever its not in use. Then again it sees less use than my iMac.

 

[Drharrington]

How about none of the above....?

 

[PhillyAnt]

Late 2012 iMac, using Kill A Watt:

Normal idle with no open applications: 85 watts
Heaven app. at Ultra performance settings: 170 watts
iMac with display off: 40 watts
iMac in sleep mode: 2 watts

What is the heaven app?

 

[RoastingPig]

I shut my baby down at night no need for it to be sleeping since I have ssd and it boots in like 10 seconds

 

[jamesjingyi]

Potentially excessive spin ups and spin downs if your Mac has a hard drive in it. If it has solid state, then on, off, sleep - whatever, it will make little difference.

If my iMac had only SSD, I would probably still leave it on always, but sleep would be more of an option.

My MacBook Air sleeps whenever its not in use. Then again it sees less use than my iMac.

So if I leave my MacBook Air on sleep it will be fine? (P.s sorry for such a nooby question haha )

 

[dandrewk]

What is the heaven app?

It's a FPS benchmarking app. I wanted to tax the iMac to see its maximum current draw.

http://unigine.com/products/heaven/

 

[Johnf1285]

So if I leave my MacBook Air on sleep it will be fine? (P.s sorry for such a nooby question haha )

Yeah it'll be fine

 

[rushbc]

I've been leaving mine on all the time recently.

I use Hot Corners to sleep the display, otherwise it is set to sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity. The hard disks are set to never spin down (a good way to avoid unnecessary spin ups and spin downs).

According to my UPS, the iMac consumes 5 to 7 watts when the display is off and it is idle. Less than most light bulbs.

How do I set my hard drive to never spin down?

 

[talmy]

How do I set my hard drive to never spin down?

System Preference --> Energy Saver, then make sure this box is not checked:

 

[aggri1]

I turn mine off completely, because it wakes up on its own after a little while (say, half an hour or something usually), which is really annoying at night because the screen's so bright.

 

[talmy]

I turn mine off completely, because it wakes up on its own after a little while (say, half an hour or something usually), which is really annoying at night because the screen's so bright.

See my post #44, above, and make sure "Wake for Network Access" is not checked.

 

[aggri1]

See my post #44, above, and make sure "Wake for Network Access" is not checked.

Thanks, I'll check that, but it happens in Windows 7 mostly (I think; I can't remember whether it wakes in OS X also, I'm mostly using Windows these days). I don't know where the equivalent of that setting would be in Windows.

 

[rushbc]

See my post #44, above, and make sure "Wake for Network Access" is not checked.

Thanks so much to all the Apple brothers and sisters who responded to this topic.

And a special thank-you to Talmy, who just gave me the best tidbit of info I have yet to receive from these extremely helpful forums

I had stopped sleeping my my iMac and began shutting it down because every night it would wake up in the middle of the night and turn on the display for no apparent reason…and even tho I would set the brightness to the lowest level, it would still wake me up most nights. Now I know why it was waking up!

I have disabled the "Wake for network access" option, and now I can simply put the iMac to sleep at night again when I go to bed.

Thanks again!

 

[CoinOP]

I shut it down because of Windows trauma's. On Windows it never worked like it should.

I have my first Mac a few months now. I never tried sleep mode, because it turns on and off like it should without force quitting some background services or program lie in Windows...

 

[ATC]

Shut down and booting is excruciatingly slow on my 09' iMac so I much prefer sleep/wake cycles especially since I use my system on and off all day for mostly short spurts at a time. I just shut it down when going out of town for a few days.