12-27-2007, 11:21 AM

When my Mac goes to sleep, if im downloading something big, or making a movie or something, does the downloading/making stop, or does it continue?
Sorry if this is a stupid question.

12-27-2007, 11:22 AM

Originally Posted by Eskimomo1994

When my Mac goes to sleep, if im downloading something big, or making a movie or something, does the downloading/making stop, or does it continue?
Sorry if this is a stupid question.

It stops. When your Mac goes to sleep, it essentially goes into a mode where it only uses enough power to keep the memory active. All processing is suspended until you wake it up.

12-27-2007, 11:39 AM

oh that sucks, so is there a way of kind of, not it being totally on but keep doing the downloads or something

12-27-2007, 11:42 AM

you could turn off your monitor? that's about it.

12-27-2007, 01:42 PM

not being "totally on" would be impossible while downloading a file, essentially because downloading a file is something that requires you be "totally on". It is like you are asking us if there is a way to not be "totally on" while browsing the web and emailing people and playing a game. Obviously this would be an insane question, but its a similar situation to yours.


Edit: I actually confused myself when i read over that post, i hope you understand what im saying.

12-27-2007, 02:49 PM

so if I turn off my monitor its still on right (so it keeps downloading)
How do I turn my monitor off?

12-27-2007, 02:55 PM

Originally Posted by Eskimomo1994

so if I turn off my monitor its still on right (so it keeps downloading)
How do I turn my monitor off?

That's right - if you just turn your monitor off it should be fine. You can either do this manually, or set it to turn your monitor off after a certain amount of inactivity. Those settings can be changed in System Preferences => Energy Saver (Put display to sleep after xxx minutes of inactivity)

Or, if you prefer to turn it off manually, you can just turn the brightness down all the way on the display (notebook models).

01-03-2008, 09:41 AM

Originally Posted by godfatherrr

not being "totally on" would be impossible while downloading a file, essentially because downloading a file is something that requires you be "totally on". It is like you are asking us if there is a way to not be "totally on" while browsing the web and emailing people and playing a game. Obviously this would be an insane question, but its a similar situation to yours.


Edit: I actually confused myself when i read over that post, i hope you understand what im saying.

actually i'm pretty sure that winboxes can retain their network connection and keep downloading while in sleep.. or "standby" or w/e it's called. so it's not that weird to think macs could.

01-03-2008, 11:05 AM

Originally Posted by ki99

actually i'm pretty sure that winboxes can retain their network connection and keep downloading while in sleep.. or "standby" or w/e it's called. so it's not that weird to think macs could.

Standby in Windows works pretty much the same as it does on the Mac. All network connections are dropped and the processor is not active. The other mode that you have in Windows is Hibernate, but that actually saves the content of memory to disk and turns the computer off.

How do I know this? Because, by default in Windows XP, when a user closes the lid of their laptop, it goes into Standby. My users do it all the time - and it usually generates a help desk call, because unlike with the Mac, when you resume a Windows machine from standby, it doesn't always gracefully recover the network connection.

01-03-2008, 03:28 PM

haha! my windows friends have lied to me yet again! oh those windows kids and their shenanigans!

01-03-2008, 05:22 PM

Originally Posted by cwa107

when you resume a Windows machine from standby, it doesn't always gracefully recover the network connection.

Sometimes when I wake up my mac, it doesn't gracefully recover my network connection. But it rarely happens, and I have a linksys router...

01-03-2008, 06:27 PM

Originally Posted by NPuter

Sometimes when I wake up my mac, it doesn't gracefully recover my network connection. But it rarely happens, and I have a linksys router...

Really? I've never had that problem - I mean, it's not instantaneous, but usually within 10 seconds.

I'm using a Linksys WRT54G.

01-03-2008, 06:42 PM

I love putting my mac into standby then taking it to a friends house, the network gets pretty confused