MacBook: Power off vs Sleep
As the title says, what do you do, and why?
I just close it. (sleep)
Never really thought about why I do that, I guess I like that when you open it up you continue doing what you were previously litteraly in 5 seconds.
I occasionally restart my Mac when installing or updating software.
I just bought a Mac and was asking myself the same question.
Does anybody know does leaving your Mac in sleep mode effect the overall battery life?
Thanks
I almost always shut mine off when I know I’m not going to be using it for awhile. If I’m just tooling around the apartment for the day, I’ll just close it up and put it into sleep if I know I’m going to getting right back at it.
I don’t trust sleep mode honestly.
If I’m leaving the house with it, power off. Although it only takes like 15 seconds to boot back up anyways. Otherwise, let it sleep!
I leave mine in sleep mode ALL the time and only shut down if I know I won’t be using my computer for a few days. At least once a month, if not more, I run the battery down all the way and let the auto shut off do it’s thing. I do this because I read it helps in “resetting” your battery and how your computer reads the remaining % charge of the battery.
This is the correct thing to do. The battery itself has a ‘brain’ if you will, that every so often needs a recalibration as the life of the battery dwindles. The batteries themselves trickle, that is, they charge until 100, use down to 95 and then charge back up again. This keeps it from continuously charging at full capacity, thus extending the life of the battery. Sleeping the machine or rebooting it makes no difference on the battery, if it’s plugged in, it’s plugged in.
A good dashboard app to use is istat. It will give you the remaining health of the battery without having to open the system profiler. It’s pretty helpful for a number of other things as well, as it shows CPU usage, memory, running processes, hardware temps, etc.
sleep is fine…no need to shut off your macbook all the time unless you want to pretend you are using windows. i turn my off every few weeks for same reason as above.
option and click on battery icon in menubar will give you battery status.
“normal” is just that
The only reason my system hasn’t been on for a month straight is because I just installed the Solid Mix Series, Transient Punch, and Guitar Rig 5 and had to restart because NI is still suck in the dark ages and hasn’t realized that there’s basically no reason to do that.
Seriously…my computer stays on for months at a time with no problems, though it will wear the battery faster since I can’t get hibernate to work. I’ll probably start shutting it down occasionally.
Also, I never cycle my battery. I charge it every chance I get and leave it plugged in all the time if I can. My last battery was at 94% health after 3 years. I do the same thing with my iPhone and finish most days at above 85% remaining unless my girlfriend was playing angry birds.
Bucking the trend like a boss 
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Me and a friend of mine have competitions to see who can go the longest without rebooting. We get really burned when we have to restart for system updates 
Something is wrong with my battery…I’ve had my mbp for 10 days and have already went through 15 cycles…and I’m at work or sleeping the majority of the day. My battery lasts about an hour before its completely drained.
I prefer to shut it down if i need to take it from home, otherwise I just sleep it.
If you call apple they will make an appointment to fix it.
Actually, I think I might have found the problem…looked in activity monitor and noticed a few programs hogging a ton of resources. Now I’ll try things out again and see if closing them down solved the problem. If not, I’ll call apple.
Without the inevitable bar brawl - what about the same question for PC?
Sleep, and I reboot before every show.
take it into an apple store and if the battery’s broken they’ll replace it for you.
I leave mine on sleep all the time. It’s in sleep when I take it to my gigs. Never had a problem. When it’s in sleep the hard drives are shut down and only the RAM is being powered. Never had a problem.
Same here (for PC) - never had an issue.
This.