noob questions.

mjarema · Aug 21, 2007

My MacBook should be arriving any minute now...the suspense is killing me ;-)

1) with previous laptops, when leaving them on 24/7 (or most of the time) I had experienced a lot of HD failure. Is that the case with Macs? Can I leave it on a lot and have it be ok?

thanks!

fireshaper · Aug 21, 2007

I leave my mac powered on all the time. When I'm not going to be using it for a while (ie - as it is traveling in my backpack from school to work, when I'm not using it at work, when I'm sleeping, etc) I have it asleep. From everything I've read and experienced, it is fine to leave the mac in sleep mode while you aren't using it, although I'm not sure about leaving it awake for long periods of time.

tobywuk · Aug 21, 2007

How long can the mac actually stay in sleep mode? does it drain the battery at all?

hopelessX · Aug 21, 2007

I leave mine on all the time. if you have it closed it goes into sleep and I've left mine on for at the very least a week unplugged and it was still fine when I started it up again.
Sometimes I find it gets stuck in sleep and you have to powerdown and start it again. Maybe that's just mine. Who knows, its not a huge deal anyway.

ambivalent · Aug 21, 2007

mac's were kind of designed to never be powered off, where pc's are a lot happier if theyre off at night, or every weekend.

I left my powerbook on all the time pretty much, works great

mjarema · Aug 21, 2007

ambivalent said:
mac's were kind of designed to never be powered off, where pc's are a lot happier if theyre off at night, or every weekend.

I left my powerbook on all the time pretty much, works great

GREAT to know. In my experience, in PC world, I had many problems with leaving on all the time (except in transit obviously) ;-)

fireshaper · Aug 21, 2007

tobywuk said:
How long can the mac actually stay in sleep mode? does it drain the battery at all?

It will drain the battery but VERY slowly. I charge my battery when I get home from work while I am using it and unplug it when it is charged, usually going through this routine a few times during the evening, and then I keep it asleep all day. Using it randomly through out the day, with a full charge in the morning (4 minutes+), I would say that I normally have about a quarter of a battery left.