Sleeping Question(Hasnt been asked yet!)

[Dan Shelley]

When you go into the apple menu, then perferences, I was messing with the sliders on the energy saving, with sleeping..... One of them said Never put to sleep, and when I put the slider to never, a warning came up, and said it would drain my battery over period of time, if I never let it sleep....

How bad does it drain the battery??? Its very important that I'm online 24/7 for business purposes.

 

[mac57]

I assume that this just means that if you leave the machine idle over time, and don't allow it to sleep, it consumes more energy than if you let it sleep. I think that this is all it is about.

 

[Martin.]

Why don't you plug it into the wall?

 

[todd51]

Yea, it just means when your using your battery, if you just let the computer sit, it would normally automatically go to sleep after so long of inactivity, therefor saving battery life, but if you were to let it sit 3-4 hours of inactivity it would drain the battery.

 

[mac57]

Certainly, with PC notebooks I have used, there is a benefit to not leaving the machine plugged into AC all the time... the battery slowly degrades, to the point where it will only hold half an hour of charge or so. It is useful to run it down flat regularly to keep it healthy. Of course there are only so many recharge cycles per battery's lifetime, so perhaps an approach somewhere in between might be best...