Alternative to sleep mode MacBook

[foges]

When my macbook is in sleep mode and the battery runs out, the computer saves the contents of the ram onto the HD (at least it think it does) and then copies it back onto into the ram when i connect it to the power plug again. Is there anyway to get my macbook to do this whenever i put it into sleep/another mode (basically to save battery life when i leave it in sleep mode over a longer period of time).

 

[Tegeril]

That functionality is called safe sleep. It actually activates every time the computer goes to sleep. When you close it, you should notice that it takes a few moments before the light begins to pulse. That delay is the computer storing the contents of the RAM for safe sleep. At that point, you can remove the battery in order to swap batteries. You ought to simply be able to remove the battery from the laptop after the light begins pulsing in order to save battery life.

Test it out because I haven't used it since mid-Tiger and I'm not sure if anything has changed.

 

[Tegeril]

In case I'm wrong... here's a widget: http://www.apple.com/downloads...r/deepsleepwidget.html

 

[loup garou]

Originally posted by: Tegeril
In case I'm wrong... here's a widget: http://www.apple.com/downloads...r/deepsleepwidget.html

argh, doesn't work with Leopard, I really want to be able to hibernate my macbook like a windows machine.

EDIT Found Midnight, which is Leopard-compatible....but, it doesn't play nice with InsomniaX (which still isn't truly Leopard compatible). Time to fiddle around with both to get them to work how I want.

Why can't Apple just let us choose power options like in Windows? I don't want my machine to sleep when I close the lid, just turn off the screen and I want to hibernate when I press the power button, dammit!

 

[TheStu]

I have noticed that sleep consumes remarkably little power, something like 1%/hr of battery life, at that rate, you could sleep the machine for 4 days before the battery would die... of course, at that point, I would just turn the laptop off.

 

[loup garou]

ah...cmd-option-eject will hibernate. How the hell is that such an under-advertised feature? Works great (still need to disable InsomniaX for it to work though).

 

[Tegeril]

Huh, I'm quite surprised at that command. I never knew That makes dual boot pretty appealing.

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: Tegeril
Huh, I'm quite surprised at that command. I never knew That makes dual boot pretty appealing.

I currently only have OS X installed on my machine, but I see no way for Command+Alt+Eject to be able to allow for dual booting. Am i missing something? When I did it, my system just went down like *snap*. I didn't see anything that would be useful for dual booting. Unless of course you are saying for hotswapping the hard drives, that would be something.

 

[Injury]

Originally posted by: TheStu
I have noticed that sleep consumes remarkably little power, something like 1%/hr of battery life, at that rate, you could sleep the machine for 4 days before the battery would die... of course, at that point, I would just turn the laptop off.

My MBP uses about 15% of the battery per 24 hours when I just shut it without manually telling it to sleep or anything like that, so it might be a little more than 5 days.

Funny enough, my cell phone battery doesn't even last that long. :-\

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: Injury

Originally posted by: TheStu
I have noticed that sleep consumes remarkably little power, something like 1%/hr of battery life, at that rate, you could sleep the machine for 4 days before the battery would die... of course, at that point, I would just turn the laptop off.

My MBP uses about 15% of the battery per 24 hours when I just shut it without manually telling it to sleep or anything like that, so it might be a little more than 5 days.

Funny enough, my cell phone battery doesn't even last that long. :-\

Well, teh macbook pro does have a slightly larger battery

The hibernate key stroke is nice though, i'll have to remember that.

 

[Tegeril]

Oh, for some reason I was thinking it would still go through an efi boot and allow you to choose the target volume to resume/startup. As opposed to just resuming from sleep.

Oh well

 

[TheStu]

I remember that one of things that was discussed for Leopard was a quick OS switch feature like what you are looking for. However, after a few developer builds this was dropped, and then never mentioned again. It is possible that it will be in a 10.5.x release, but I doubt we will see it before 10.6

 

[foges]

ok, the widget works for me, but alt-cmd-eject just puts my computer to sleep (it goes blank instantly and the light fades in and out. Would be cool if it worked, simpler than using a widget