Turn off or sleep?

As I guess some of you know I recently got an iMac G5, I was just wondering whether I should turn it off everynight or put it into sleep instead? What do you guys do with your macs?

even tho i dont own a mac (yet)...

i prefer to turn my computers off at night...

I leave mine on all the time, only putting it in sleep mode when I take it somewhere. I have a PowerBook, not an iMac, however.

Mac's aren't meant to be shut off, they're built to sleep. I'd only shut it off if you're not going to use it for a very long time, otherwise sleep is totally fine.

Sleep, definitely. Much quicker then shutting down and starting back up. And as it's been said above OS X was meant to sleep whilst not in use. I believe it runs utilities in the middle of the night.

All the manuals that came with my iMac G5 say let it sleep unless you will be away for several days.

When the mac is in sleep, does it eat up battary power? If I were to leave it unchared all day, in sleep mode, for one hole day, would it run out of battary?

It uses very little juice when sleeping. I had used the iBook all day yesterday, ended up falling asleep, then when I woke up I still had 13% battery life left.

Sleep seems to be the general consensus around the forums. I don't have my Mac yet (PowerBook 12" to be delivered on Wednesday), but I can't wait. Then I can get off this infernal Windows machine (except for gaming).

Sleep is generally better than turning your Mac off but the overnight cron scripts do not run during sleep. I use MacJanitor to run them manually if I put my Mac to sleep.
Some i.Book & P.Book owners seem to turn them off to save the battery power.
My Mac usually stays awake with the screen off and hard drive sleeps when possible while Folding@Home 24/7 though.
MacJanitor http://personalpages.tds.net/~brian_hill/
Take Care

I was a long time PC user, but got an iBook last August (for school). I absolutely love it. It's a great product.

But, is it just me or is most of the advice on these forums completely uninformed? Everyone is telling you to put your computer to sleep with absolutely no reasoning to back it up.

In fact, neither computers nor Unix were built to be put to sleep. You shouldn't turn it off OR put it to sleep. Just turn off your monitor and leave it. If you don't want to foot the energy bill... well then, that's another story.

Of course, restarting every once in a while will be good for performance. Memory leaks among other things aren't going to get fixed by the operating system.

And as it's been said above OS X was meant to sleep whilst not in use. I believe it runs utilities in the middle of the night.

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It can't run those utilities if your computer is asleep.

i would sleep it if i had a ups, the power here is unpredictable

"In fact, neither computers nor Unix were built to be put to sleep. You shouldn't turn it off OR put it to sleep. Just turn off your monitor and leave it. If you don't want to foot the energy bill... well then, that's another story."

Well you can just leave it on, but a) it's uneconomical and b) it's not ecological...
I can understand that some people don't want to wait 15 seconds every morning for their computer to start up, but leaving it running all night is not exactly beneficial for the environment either...

That's why I think sleep is a good compromise: You don't have to wait for the boot-up AND you're saving valuable resources (to a degree at least)...

Just my 2 (€) cents

Actually modern computer (be it Apple or any other manufacturer) are never completely off. Even if you turn them off, they still use a little amount of standby current, which isn't much lower than when it's in sleep mode. So it doesn't make a noticable difference if you leave it in sleep mode or turn it off, except it starts faster when waking up from sleep.

And I agree with altano, a restart every once in a while is a good idea, it's required anyway after most system updates.

I agree with aptmunich about the economy/ecology issue, nevertheless, if you really want to make economies on electrical current (and therefore preserve ecologic ressources) you should turn off EVERY electrical device when not using it, not leaving it in standby mode. In case of computers that means pull the plug...

My PowerBooks seems to use a lot of power starting up, so I don't bother. Uptime is from when I installed 10.3.6. We leave our PCs on as well, Windows can't do standby very well though, so it's just the hard drive and monitor.

PMJx2 said:

When the mac is in sleep, does it eat up battary power? If I were to leave it unchared all day, in sleep mode, for one hole day, would it run out of battary?

Click to expand...

I've had my iBook in sleep for days and it still has battery left, nothing to worry about.

Thanks for the responses guys. I'll leave it in sleep from now on, I'm not bothered about preserving ecological-wologys or whatever.

When I had my PC, I would turn it off most nights, unless I was downloading something. Even with an addition, that would slow all the fans down, it was still loud and rebooting, though fast was not convenient.

With the speed at which a mac wakes from sleep vs a PC, I prefer to sleep the mac vs turning it off and on.

Admittedly, I probably should turn it off maybe once a month, but I have not done so yet.

i switched to my mac not too long ago and when ppl ask me what my favourite thing about it is the fast sleep and wake up times always come up. i love just being able to shut the lid and put it in my bag for the walk home