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Sleep or shutdown ?

hippotech

hippotech

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 26, 2004
10
0
Chelmsford, UK
I've recently taken the plunge and bought an iBook, after many PC years - most recently with a Dell laptop.

Standby / Hibernation on 'wintel' kit was always a rather hit and miss affair, sometimes freezing up and requiring a power on / off.

The iBook on the other hand never fails to sleep or wake up - my question is, should I be shutting it down at night as I am now or just letting it sleep. What will sleeping rather than shutting down do for the battery life.

I tend to use it every day so I probably won't notice too much degredation - is the only thing using power th pulsing light on the front ?

Thanks....and sorry if it's an obvious question but stability & reliability is a new feature in a computer I've not been used to :)

Hippotech
 
This issue was one I pondered and researched when I switched recently to my current PB...

Between searching the threads in here, talking to a few Mac mates, and (albeit something I don't normally do) read the manual...

sleep is what I do.
Sleep works even when moving it around.
I just close the lid - make sure the LED is pulsating - and put it in its sleeve, move it, travel with it, whatever!

Only time I have turned it off was if I knew I wasn't going to use it for a while... (as in more than a day or so).
 
I turn my PowerBook off to spare the battery because I will sometimes let it sit for a week without being used or plugged in.

If you use a mac regularly though, I think you pretty much never need to have it turned off.
 
Thanks guys - general consensus from a few people I have spoken to since posting is sleep is fine - so sleep it is !!!

The only thing I have noticed is 'cos I use a two button mouse ( sorry old 'wintel' hangover ) if I jog the mouse when the lid is closed it wakes up. I tend to leave it on my desk with the mouse plugged in, so I guess I'll unplug the mouse before letting it sleep.

Hippo
 
hippotech said:
Thanks guys - general consensus from a few people I have spoken to since posting is sleep is fine - so sleep it is !!!

The only thing I have noticed is 'cos I use a two button mouse ( sorry old 'wintel' hangover ) if I jog the mouse when the lid is closed it wakes up. I tend to leave it on my desk with the mouse plugged in, so I guess I'll unplug the mouse before letting it sleep.

Hippo
Click to expand...

Yeah, it'll do that. Also, if it is asleep and you then unplug a USB device it will also wake up, so make sure you unplug before sleeping.
 
even if you tap the mouse and the laptop wakes up, if you just let it sit there, it will go back to sleep. (and not because time elapses, it goes back asleep quicker than that, maybe 30 sec. tops.)

i usually leave the mouse plugged in. i know it goes back to sleep even if you accidentally wake it up.
 
hippotech said:
...I use a two button mouse ( sorry old 'wintel' hangover )...
Click to expand...
No apologies... most Mac users prefer multiple buttons as well. I wish Apple'd stop worrying about "losing face" and just go to a two-button mouse option - at least for the pro line of desktops and laptops.

And I agree - sleep unless it'd be asleep for a long time.
 
emw said:
Yeah, it'll do that. Also, if it is asleep and you then unplug a USB device it will also wake up, so make sure you unplug before sleeping.
Click to expand...

Man I remember when I figured that out. I was very relieved. Up until like last week, whenever it came on after removal of the mouse, the iBook woke up. I thought I had broken the dang thing since it kept waking up.

Very very relieved when I found out it was the mouse.

Mike
 
jsw said:
No apologies... most Mac users prefer multiple buttons as well. I wish Apple'd stop worrying about "losing face" and just go to a two-button mouse option - at least for the pro line of desktops and laptops.

And I agree - sleep unless it'd be asleep for a long time.
Click to expand...
Sleeping your Mac is a good idea unless you're not going to use your Mac for 1 day or more. However, I throw that rule out the window because I run Folding@Home, so my Mac is awake 24/7. I've found that I hardly ever need to right-click/Control-click, so a two-button mouse wouldn't be worth it for me. I've found that there are so many ways to do things in Mac OS X without using the contextual menu or by accessing the contextual menu in a different way than right-clicking/Control-clicking.
 
little naps

I rarely turn my ibook off. it was a bit of a habit to break, i was used to having to reset an OS everyso often to keep it running stable. but itt turned into a challenge to see how many days i could go without having to restart my laptop. It is so stable that i regularly go 3 weeks of using the laptop with many sleep cycles a day with out having to restart it. in fact the only times i restart is when i install/ update software that needs a restart.
that being said if it only ever sleeps then you may want to get an app like mac janitor or cocktail to run some of the housekeeping scripts that normally run at startup.
sorry i don't have a link for those at the moment, Kev
 
actually . . .

berner said:
I rarely turn my ibook off. it was a bit of a habit to break, i was used to having to reset an OS everyso often to keep it running stable. but itt turned into a challenge to see how many days i could go without having to restart my laptop. It is so stable that i regularly go 3 weeks of using the laptop with many sleep cycles a day with out having to restart it. in fact the only times i restart is when i install/ update software that needs a restart.
that being said if it only ever sleeps then you may want to get an app like mac janitor or cocktail to run some of the housekeeping scripts that normally run at startup.
sorry i don't have a link for those at the moment, Kev
Click to expand...

It was my understanding that leaving your mac always on is the ideal. Most housekeeping scripts are set to run between 3 and 5 am, so if you keep your mac running all night you should be set. It's users who do shut down every night that ought to grab a copy of mac janitor or cocktail. I haven't heard of any necessary housekeeping happening at startup.

Question. Anybody know if housekeeping happens when your mac is asleep? I rarely shut down, but I often put my PB to sleep at night.

Thanks
Charlie
 
C-Mezak said:
It was my understanding that leaving your mac always on is the ideal. Most housekeeping scripts are set to run between 3 and 5 am, so if you keep your mac running all night you should be set. It's users who do shut down every night that ought to grab a copy of mac janitor or cocktail. I haven't heard of any necessary housekeeping happening at startup.

Question. Anybody know if housekeeping happens when your mac is asleep? I rarely shut down, but I often put my PB to sleep at night.

Thanks
Charlie
Click to expand...
No, housekeeping tasks do not occur if your Mac is asleep when they're scheduled to occur.
 
Cron tasks must be done manually if the computer isn't awake at two or three o'clock. Regarding sleep/shutdown, I usually let my iBook sleep because my understanding is that startup is the most stressful thing for a hard drive. From what I've heard, it's better for the hard drive to keep restarts to a minimum. And of course, it's always more convenient to have your computer ready to use in a second. And keeping it in sleep overnight only uses a percent of so of battery power for me.
 
Just put the computer to sleep if you will be using it within the next 48 hours. If it will be longer than 48 hours, Apple recommends that you shutdown.
 
ok but what are the recommendations for leaving it plugged in?

i leave my ibook plugged in a lot (in fact at the moment because i'm at home and not at uni it stays plugged in all the time unless i'm doing a full drain/charge)

am i killing my lovely battery?
 
Nope, it's better to keep it plugged in. Your Li-Ion battery has a limited number of recharge cycles (around 300-500 or so, I believe) but doesn't suffer from the memory effect so frequent partial charges are better. Keeping it forever won't completely preserve battery capacity since it deteriorates over time anyways but it's the best you could do. However, if it's going to be unused for a long time it should be stored at 40%.
 
The only reason I shut down my iBook every night is that the white sleep LED is actually rather bright in a completely dark room when I'm trying to sleep. Sorry iBook, my sleep is more important than yours. :D
 
You are feeling verrrry sleeepy...

Why shut down? You might have a reason, but because the Mac cares shouldn't be one of them. We've got three Macs here, a G4 iMac, Cube and PowerBook and none of them are ever routinely shut down.

I would recommend downloading a nifty little utility called applejack. It installs a script that runs all of the basic maintenance procedures on the Mac on reboot into single user mode. So maybe once a month, you boot into single user mode (cmd-s on startup), type "applejack" at the prompt, and the menu selection for running the whole battery of procedures (fsck, repair permissions, etc). It even reboots when it's done.
 
Porsche said:
The only reason I shut down my iBook every night is that the white sleep LED is actually rather bright in a completely dark room when I'm trying to sleep. Sorry iBook, my sleep is more important than yours. :D
Click to expand...
wouldn't it be easier to put a book or something in front of the light?
 
wrldwzrd89 said:
No, housekeeping tasks do not occur if your Mac is asleep when they're scheduled to occur.
Click to expand...

Since the 3:00 - 5:00am Unix housekeeping does not occur when the Mac is asleep, those of us who sleep their Macs at night should get in the habit of forcing it to run these maintenance scripts. The process is very simple. Open Terminal (in your Utilities folder) and type (exactly):

sudo sh /etc/daily

Hit return, wait till its finished working, then type:

sudo sh /etc/weekly

Again return, wait, and type:

sudo sh /etc/monthly

Punch return, and wait till the processor stops working until you get back to work again.

Hope this helps.
 
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