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Should I sleep while on battery?

M

macDonalds

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 8, 2007
448
0
My last laptop was so freaking huge I never really took it off my desk. So, before I went to bed I would put it to sleep 95% of the time. Now with my delicious Macbook Pro, I'm more mobile and find I'm not plugged in before bed.

Is it ok to leave her sleeping constantly while on battery? Or should I just shut her down?
 
I always shut down my MBP during night, I think it will prolong the life of the machine. During the day I leave it on standby, except after a long day of work the machine gets very hot, I will turn it off to cool it. Besides it's always good to start the day with a freshly booted up machine.
 
macDonalds said:
My last laptop was so freaking huge I never really took it off my desk. So, before I went to bed I would put it to sleep 95% of the time. Now with my delicious Macbook Pro, I'm more mobile and find I'm not plugged in before bed.

Is it ok to leave her sleeping constantly while on battery? Or should I just shut her down?
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If your not going to be using it for awhile, I would just shut it down. The battery does drain slowly even during sleep, and after a few hours you would have used up some battery charge for nothing. These batteries do have a finite life span and it's probably best not to run it off battery if it's not necessary. Just my opinion anyway.
 
rocwiff said:
If your not going to be using it for awhile, I would just shut it down. The battery does drain slowly even during sleep, and after a few hours you would have used up some battery charge for nothing. These batteries do have a finite life span and it's probably best not to run it off battery if it's not necessary. Just my opinion anyway.
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In sleep my Macbook drains 2% an hour so its hardly exhausting, and in hibernation its about 2% a week.
 
HerbyGunther said:
I always shut down my MBP during night, I think it will prolong the life of the machine. During the day I leave it on standby, except after a long day of work the machine gets very hot, I will turn it off to cool it. Besides it's always good to start the day with a freshly booted up machine.
Click to expand...

Is that true, shutting the computer down every time is better for your computer? I guess I was under the impression you could keep these running and *that* would be just as good for the computer. I always just put the laptop to sleep every night, as such with my previous Ibook G4. :confused:
 
HerbyGunther said:
I always shut down my MBP during night, I think it will prolong the life of the machine.
Click to expand...
jovanboi said:
Is that true, shutting the computer down every time is better for your computer?
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Shutting down is not necessary. Many users run their MacBooks or MBPs 24/7 for months with zero problems. It prolongs battery life if you run some of the time on battery and some of the time plugged in.
 
I never turn off the computers at all. On occasion, I might just put it to sleep when I go to sleep, but beyond that, it never gets "shut down" unless I'm doing hardware upgrades / maintenance.
 
Should I set my Macbook Pro to AUTOSLEEP in say about 2 hours of inactivity? or is there no reason to shut down at all (this includes turning off autosleep)
 
kastenbrust said:
In sleep my Macbook drains 2% an hour so its hardly exhausting, and in hibernation its about 2% a week.
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True, but why waste battery power at all? Especially when you've only got so many charge cycles before the battery health starts to degrade. Seems to me you would maximize your battery's life span by minimizing power wasted from sleep/hibernation.
 
whitefang said:
Should I set my Macbook Pro to AUTOSLEEP in say about 2 hours of inactivity? or is there no reason to shut down at all (this includes turning off autosleep)
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Yes, autosleep. It does save some power while plugged in, since it isn't drawing all the power need to run the MBP.
 
Battery drain question

I normally let my book sleep overnight and charge it when I’m close to an hour left on battery life. Lately I’ve hade this issue where I’ll put my book to sleep at about half-battery power with nothing running. If I leave it alone for a day (yes, sometimes I don’t need my Mac for a whole day) in sleep mode it will kill my battery, which is not good. This has only happened in the past few weeks and I’m wondering if something is wrong with my computer. It only seems to be happening when I’m in sleep mode. If I’m using my computer I don’t have a battery life issue. My laptop is all up to date and nothing has been acting funky. I bought it in December. Is this happening to anyone else?
 
The only time my UMBP gets shut down is when I am switching over to XP. Otherwise its pretty much constantly running.
 
rocwiff said:
True, but why waste battery power at all? Especially when you've only got so many charge cycles before the battery health starts to degrade.
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It doesn't degrade with modern Lithium Ion batteries. Poor maintenance and not calibrating monthly will cause life degradation.
 
kastenbrust said:
It doesn't degrade with modern Lithium Ion batteries. Poor maintenance and not calibrating monthly will cause life degradation.
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Of course it does. Not much, but it does. If sleeping uses 2% of the battery per hour, you add one battery cycle for every fifty hours of sleeping, that is every four or five days the MacBook is sleeping while not plugged in. The battery doesn't last forever, and this makes it wear out a bit quicker. Nothing to worry about if you do it once in a while, but you don't want to do this every day.

Better to just plug it in at night. And it will be freshly charged in the morning.
 
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