Don't know if there's a "right" answer for this but here goes....when you leave your computer, is it better to shut it down completely or put it in sleep mode? The computer will be used though-out the day, sometimes sitting for half an hour, sometimes for a couple of hours. How bout at night, when it won't be used till next morning?
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Shut Down or Sleep?
- Thread starter Joe-M
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I sleep mine during the day but before going to bed I shut it down and start fresh in the morning.
Only time mine is shut down is for a restart to do an update to it. Otherwise only put to sleep. Always done this with any Mac I have owned and it has never caused any issues.
You can Sleep your iMac most of the time. Doing so will make your iMac boot up faster than if you had shut it down.
I usually only shut mine down if I am going away for a few days.
Other than that, I shut mine down every couple of weeks, but no less.
I usually only shut mine down if I am going away for a few days.
Other than that, I shut mine down every couple of weeks, but no less.
if your going to use it an hour here , an hour there during the day , you can also leave it on & just sleep the monitor
Sleep is a low power state that retains minimal power to most of the system. In this low power mode most operations are paused but enough power remains to the CPU, RAM, GPU, Hard drives, caches, etc to quickly resume what it was doing prior to the setting of the sleep condition.
Shorter answer; no. Sleep will not reset the RAM. However, weird things happen so one should always save before leaving a machine.
My philosophy on sleep was always if I'm coming back to it today I'll let it sleep but if I'm not coming back until tomorrow turn it off. There are a number of compelling safety and security reasons (perhaps only in my mind as I am trained to be conscious of these things) to want the machine powered off when it is unsupervised.
Shorter answer; no. Sleep will not reset the RAM. However, weird things happen so one should always save before leaving a machine.
My philosophy on sleep was always if I'm coming back to it today I'll let it sleep but if I'm not coming back until tomorrow turn it off. There are a number of compelling safety and security reasons (perhaps only in my mind as I am trained to be conscious of these things) to want the machine powered off when it is unsupervised.
What about leaving it on all the time and just sleeping the display? Is that not advisable? I use mine as a media centre so downloads stuff over night....
During the day, let it sleep.
At night, shut it down and restart in the morning.
Regardless of the "convenience" of sleep, we see small glitches and problems here in the forums from time to time -- many of which are cured by a shutdown and restart...
At night, shut it down and restart in the morning.
Regardless of the "convenience" of sleep, we see small glitches and problems here in the forums from time to time -- many of which are cured by a shutdown and restart...
Taking the other side
I prefer to shutdown. The advantage for me is that I have several hard drives and other devices powered on at the same time and a shutdown provides an easy way to also control the other devices. Using a smart power strip, with the mac as the master device, then powering down the mac also powers down the rest of the devices with no user intervention needed. Also with an SSD the boot time is immaterial.
I prefer to shutdown. The advantage for me is that I have several hard drives and other devices powered on at the same time and a shutdown provides an easy way to also control the other devices. Using a smart power strip, with the mac as the master device, then powering down the mac also powers down the rest of the devices with no user intervention needed. Also with an SSD the boot time is immaterial.
All my iMacs and Mac minis have run this way. My Mac mini hasn't been shut down since 2012.
No issues whatsoever.
For the iMac I set a hot corner to turn the display off.
Same here. One reason is because some applications need a restart. For example, I found out the hard way when a lot of Outlook 2011 reminders didn't pop up. I'd restart for another reason, and when it was done booting up, I'd get multiple overdue reminders. So now I restart every morning.
I never turn my Mini off, just have it set to spin down the HD and turn monitor off. I don't like sleep, because sometimes it has caused crashes, admittedly this was years ago, but rather safe than sorry.