shut down or sleep?

[mitch90]

hi..im new to mac. just got my imac last sunday

i was wondering which is better for me to do? shutdown the mac or sleep mode?

also i like to cover my mac after i shut it down or put it to sleep and i was just wondering if it still vents while in sleep mode or not

 

[Noels]

Mitch,

I use a Macbook so can't answer the 2nd question, but definitely just let it sleep - it's ready for you when you open it up. It's great in Macbook, I just close the cover and when I open the cover, it's right where I left it...

But keep it plugged it. If you don't, it does use a little battery power...

Welcome to the forum!

Noel

 

[AlyciaAnimation]

This is kind of up to you. A lot of people here will tell you that they keep their Macs on for weeks and just put it to sleep. I like shutting mine down every couple days at least (I also have an intel iMac). Some things only get done when you shut down, like emptying the memory swap, which for me can get kind of big. And if I know I'm going to be gone all day, there's no sense in having my computer on.

This is all up to you. There's no harm in putting it to sleep all the time, plenty of people do it.

I don't think you'll have a problem covering it up. When it's in sleep it draws very little power and isn't doing anything intensive that will require ventilation.

 

[mac57]

I prefer putting my Mac to sleep for the most part. There is a real benefit to putting your Mac to sleep vs. power off / power on. You have probably noticed that after you have loaded an app for the first time after a power on, all subsequent reloads of that app are MUCH faster, since part or all of it is still cached in RAM. If you have just closed the program window, the program itself is actually still fully loaded, just waiting for you to summon it back to action.

If you put your Mac to sleep each night and awaken it again each morning, you preserve this and all your most used apps just "snap" into being when you start them anew. I love this incredibly fast response, and so I use the sleep/wake cycle on my Mac pretty much exclusively. About once a week I reboot just as a form of clean up.

Tuck your Mac in and put it to sleep at night - it saves power AND delivers blazing fast application start up times.