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The only time I shut down my G5 or iBook is for software updates that require it. i have kept nothing at all on my Desktop since the Public Beta came out.

I always shutdown my Dual 1.8 G5 at work every night. It has about 20 things on the desktop. Less frequently I shutdown my Rev A 12" Powerbook at home. There are various things on the desktop mostly belonging to my wife. It does run for days at a time without restart, but I have found reason to restart when having problems. Just last night my Airport Express seemed to disappear as well as the Airport Extreme base. The Airport card was on but here were no bars. This happened while I was using the computer. Tried a few things to fix it, no joy. Then restarted and all was well. Fixed by a restart: so it seems to me that an occasional restart is not anythng to fear.

Same here. I never turn my iBook G4 off, just put it to sleep. The power button gets used very little. I only restart when a software update requires it; my current iBook uptime is 21 days 18 hours.

I do the same thing with my PB17" - run all day at work, come home and do more there. I hardly ever reboot/shutdown - almost always just sleep (which really doesn't use much battery at all - I've gone over a week without plugging in during sleep). However, from time to time I do close the apps or just log out and back in again... It's good to do to "keep things fresh" as sometimes you might have a "leak" in an app that slowly saps RAM, etc. I haven't scientifically tested to see if it's really necessary, but I do it anyway. I gotta look into these BookEnz though!

I think you're totally sane. I use my PowerBook the same way.

I also think it's fair to require a restart when certain system components are changed. They could probably find a way to not require a restart, but depending on the updated services it might still require logging out but not quite restarting, which could confuse novices. I'll betcha they weighed the support costs of getting that to work successfully vs. the nice clean slate of a restart, and probably decided "screw those anal uptimer fanatics." Which is fair. It doesn't take that long to restart if you only do it once every few weeks. I've had a PowerBook get 60 days of uptime, but it really is a stupid game.

The other often brought up issue is the overnight cron scripts. What do you do about those? I use Macaroni because it runs maintenance even if the machine was asleep at their scheduled time. I believe Macaroni is essential to true unlimited uptime.

even with 1gb of RAM, my 1 Ghz g4 iMac seems sluggish sometimes. when i quit apps i'm not using, it perks up. so i quit applications. sometimes i even restart to resolve an issue. i use onyx as a maintenance utility and it requires a restart for a full job. i use the desktop as a place to temporarily place items, even when in a finder window, and there is nothing wrong with that. i tried the diskk in the dock technique, but prefer using finder shortcuts to go directly to places like applications and utility's. hell, now that i use butler i seem to be just using butler. and i have no idea why a person would track uptime like there were a prize to be won. if i were the guy with the g5 at work, i'd leave it on all the time. then os x could run its regular maintanence.

basically same here. I have a 5+ yr old Pismo running 10.3.8 and Bookendz dock w/21" monitor at work (plus all sorts of USB, network and FW devices plugged into the dock). The dock is handy. Then at home just wirelessly using the PB alone.

But what's with you having to click on "detect monitors"? I don't do that - I didn't even know there was such a thing I just plug the Powerbook into the dock then lift the lid to wake it up and the big screen is detected - the monitor wakes up spanning the desktop as before. I think as long as the monitor is plugged in before the machine wakes, it should detect it fine without any specific user command.

The Locations menu is a real timesaver, I have probably a dozen different settings for the various locations I frequently travel to - just a simple click and ready to go. Meanwhile my Windoze coworkers are busy futzing with TCP/IP settings ("can you connect, yet?...") Speaking of PCs, what's with the crazy long sleep/wakeup time for a PC laptop while it saves the world to disk/recovers from disk? The instant wakeup/sleep of the Powerbook is nice, just shut or open the lid.

My powerbook is always on with restarts only for software updates. I am no expert, but I have heard that constant powering on and off can reduce the life of the components. I'd be very interested to know if that is based in fact.

I do, however, shut down apps like Safari when they are not being used. With 512MB of RAM, I notice a difference if too many apps are running simultaneously.

Geez, I tend to not side with never shutting down thing. I have this fear of lugging around my PB (AL 1.25) while on even though, I feel its well protected when its off. It doesn't make alot of sense I guess, but after that article, I'm thinking about trying that today. Also I can't sleep my G5 1.8 because of all the sleep issues. I can't wait for a fix on that..

I wish Apple would advertize this functionality more. I am amazed at how long my Windoze laptop takes to boot up or shutdown. Even the "Standby" and "Hibernate" functions take seemingly forever. Anyone else ever compare their Mac to a Windows machine in this way?

"I have heard that constant powering on and off can reduce the life of the components. I'd be very interested to know if that is based in fact"

Yes, it is based in fact. There are two stresses that affect a computer on power up/power down: Power stress (the sudden surge of electricity to get the computer going) and thermal stress (cold to hot). Both cause wear and tear on components. IT fundamentalists insist you should never turn your computer off or you will subject it to a power and thermal stress cycle.

The problem is, those guys live in server rooms and their computer have never heard of the concept of sleep. So their advice can't be taken at face value when applied to PowerBooks. If you let your PowerBook sleep, it will go through power and thermal cycles just as if it was turned off. So if you're trying to be an anal hardware person, you're not going to avoid these power and thermal cycles if you never shut down and yet you let it sleep, because sleep isn't much better from that point of view.

Ultimately, since sleep doesn't prevent hardware stress, the main reason to sleep is for convenience. Why should you wait a minute or more to boot up every time you want to use it? If the stress is the same either way, might as well use sleep instead of shut down.

If we were to make hardware preservation as much of a priority as the hardware weenies would insist, we would have to leave our PowerBooks on as much as possible, including letting them run overnight with the lids open and without sleeping, and living in fear of the stress cycle every time you have to power it down for transport in your bag. That's no way to live! It's much more constructive to assume that Apple designed these machines to be used exactly as they are used by most people: Running when used, sleeping when not used, and not leaving them on overnight. I did that and my 2000 Pismo still works five years later.

(Try to minimize the number of times you open the lid, though. The clutches do wear out. My Pismo lid knows about that one too.)

Well, I let my titanium PB sleep too, but I have a warning. I also left it plugged in to the charger, thinking that I'd NEVER have to restart EVER again, with the battery getting charged all the time.

You all probably know this, but you shouldn't leave the PB plugged in to the charger. It killed my battery, then it sucked everything out of the internal battery. Now I HAVE to keep it plugged in, because until I replace the battery, everytime I restart the computer it is 1970 again.

Ah 1970. . how i don't remember it that well being only a very very small boy. but i do remember the carpenters-close to you, simon and garfunkle-bridge over troubled waters, elton john-your song, miniskirts and bell bottoms and the hair oh boy, i rememeber the hair. When you restart your laptop without the plug does your shirt change to tie dye? I am not sure what I would do if I had a time machine in my laptop though.

well to be on topic-i normally let my 15Al PB1.5 sleep at nights. but if i think things are getting a bit sluggish i turn it off and restart. . maybe about once a week. I don't know if that really perks anything or not but at least i get a chance to go grab a coffee or yogurt.

Overnight we shouldn't be leaving our PB plugged into the charger?

Unfortunately, I've been plagued with a load of problems, problems which surfaced in the last 3 incremental OS updates to 10.3. These have ranged from losing my IP communications between any wireless base station and the original powerbook 17 I use.

I'm glad to hear that many folks haven't encountered the problems I have. I suspect, I need to do a complete reinstall of my system.

Yet, despite these problems nothing compares to the problems present on the Windows platform. I enjoy not dealing with spyware, pop-up and viruses whice pervade that computing platform.

re: 1970—Platform shoes, stripey pants. And I keep hoping the Beatles will get back together, since they've just broken up.



Anyway, you can keep it plugged in overnight, but not for weeks. (Actually, I was very sick and left it plugged in by my bedside during recovery. It is also a good way to kill an iPod's battery.)

From the Apple Support website: "For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. Apple does not recommend leaving your portable plugged in all the time."
My PB functions mainly on my desk, so it's never shutdown, but occasionally (about once a week) I take it out with me. I reckon that runs the battery down enough to keep it active. Other wise I just unplug it for a time while I'm using it. Also don't forget http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86284

I use the desktop a lot, as a repository for temporary items I'm working with, even though I often view it with a Finder window (which is another of the great ideas in OSX). I often drag snippets there when I know I'll need them later but that I won't want to keep them forever.

The only reason I shut down my 17" 1.3Ghz is to plug-in/unplug my S-Video cable. Is that hot-swappable now? I know in my G3-250 that was about the worst thing you could do. And I had no idea you could plug in an external monitor without shutting down. Guess growing up with the original Mac Plus has made me a bit too cautious with modern machines

My other big reasons for restarting are to clear page-outs (even with 2GB of ram this is still an issue with apps like Golive, Flash MX, Quark and PS CS running at the same time) as well as getting back space from FileVault.

All the same here. I Rarely shutdown. In fact I can't remember that last time I had to shutdown. Always the Sleep for my mac. I figure, I never shutdown, I only go to sleep. Why should it be different for my mac?

The truth, as usual, is somewhere in the middle. It's not good to keep the PowerBook plugged in without ever draining it, but on the other hand, you don't want to run the battery all the way down every time. The lesser of the two evils is to leave it plugged in most of the time, since lithium-ion batteries vastly prefer to be trickle-charged over being deep-cycled. So Apple's advice here is sound. It's OK to leave it plugged in much of the time, as long as you run the battery down every month or so to maintain proper calibration.

"The only reason I shut down my 17" 1.3Ghz is to plug-in/unplug my S-Video cable. Is that hot-swappable now?"

No way! You shut down for that? I hot-swap the S-Video cable all the time on my PowerBook Aluminum AND on my PowerBook G3 FireWire. Never a problem.

Granted, I did see stability problems hot-swapping video cables in the earlier days of OS X, but those problems went away as OS X got upgraded.

That's great to hear; I guess I was being paranoid about it. My G3 powerbook was first generation, no USB or Firewire, just SCSI and ADB, and the warnings about unplugging S-Video without shutting down were scary enough to make me do it on this machine. But what about external monitors? They're plug-and play as well?

I'm on my first PB (12" 1.33 Ghz) after 5 yrs of a PowerMac and I'm in good agreement with the "sleeping preferred" mode. However, I don't find that sleeping uses next to no battery power, which surprises me. After maybe 48 hours of sleep, I'd guess the power meter shows perhaps 80-85% left. I calibrated the unit just after I got it by doing a full charge/run till dead/full recharge cycle, so that shouldn't be an issue. I would have expected less of a drain.

"But what about external monitors? They're plug-and play as well?"

All the ones I've tried. The TV through S-video on my G3 (10.2.8), and my CRT through the included VGA adapter through the DVI port on my G4 PowerBook. It's a little disconcerting because the screens fade in and out of a blue screen as it does the switchover, but it doesn't matter what's running when I do it, it all comes back smoothly. (10.3.8) I'll have to leave it up to someone else to talk about actual DVI LCDs, but I'm going to guess that those are hot-swappable too since I have not been able to bring the machine down hot-swapping the other video interfaces.

I never shut down but I do log out every night. I find apps tend to bog down after a while -- but maybe just quitting them would be sufficient. And Virtual PC routinely can't wake from sleep properly (or maybe it's just taking ages and I lose patience).

the only negative impact of just putting your computer to sleep is that the OS never runs its little "housekeeping" routines. There is a daily, a weekly and a monthly version.
Got 10.3 or higher? Go into Applications/Utilities and run Activity Monitor. Check out your System Memory. Opening and closing windows & running programs whittles that down. but, remember those numbers, they'll change in a minute.
Okay, now open up a terminal window and type: sudo periodic daily
(all lower case, and hit return)
it'll ask you for your password.. enter your regular password (assuming your an administrator).
after its done and returns to a prompt, hit your up arrow to get the previous command back; now backspace over daily and type in weekly
(thus: sudo periodic weekly)
it'll take longer to run.... but when its done, go back and look at your system memory. Voila!
wait, don't forget to run: sudo periodic monthly
want to know what they do? type: man periodic

these programs are set to run at 3am~5am and if your Pbook is asleep, it wont' wake up to run 'em.

anyway, your system memory is back to full availablity and you can go for YEARS without rebooting.
welcome to the world without Gates.

Ah Man, you're just depressing me. This is exactly how I used to run my Wall Street 266. I almost never shut it down, and it was unbelievably reliable. My 1.25 AL Powerbook, though, is a very different animal. It crashes when I wake it about 20% of the time, sometimes a freeze, sometimes a dark screen, sometimes a missing cursor. If I do leave it on all night, it sometimes--although rarely--runs while asleep and is VERY warm to the touch in the morning. Apple couldn't reproduce the problem, so I'm stuck with crashes and frequent shutdowns and startups. Sooo depressing. Has really taken all the fun out of being a powerbook person.

Very interesting article. I have an iBook G4 with 768 MB RAM and never shut it down either. I put it to sleep. I sometimes have to log out/log in again when I change the desktop theme (I use Shapeshifter).

But I have a question regarding the swap. This issue hasn't been addressed here. We all know that MacOS X regulates the VM use dynamically. This can cause the swap files to grow dramatically over time. If you type "top" in the Terminal you'll see what I mean. Also when the pageouts get higher than the pageins a restart is necessary. Or do you know another way to resetting the swap space ? The only way I know is to restart the Mac. If it weren't necessary I wouldn't do it either.

If you continue to add pop-under ads to your site I will be putting you on my "do not go to" list. These are the most disgusting types of "in your face" ads. I am really disappointed that a Mac site would stoop to that level.

i only restart my 12" PB to boot off my debian ppc linux installation :D

I've had my Powerbook 18mths and the only times I've shut it down for any length of time is when I've gone on holidays and left it behind -but I don't remember the last time that was, some time last year.

I'm afriad to shutdown ; )

Really, i had some problems starting up one or two times, and promissed to myself to just leave it to sleep : )))

I never shutdown my Powerbook 12" (superdrive), for two years now.
During the evening, I spend my time with it working on battery, and when the battery is run out, I'll charge it, and continue working.
After that, I close the lid, and let my Powerbook go to sleep, in the meantime, charging the battery.
I must admit that battery time is now about 2hours, maybe a little less. So, I'll have to get a newer one, when it falls under 1 hour.
My Powerbook is still going strong though

I also hate having popunders appear when I finish with my browser. I guess safari hasn't been able to keep up with the work arounds coming out to end run the pop ups disabler. bad website. go stand in the corner for a few minutes and come back when you can play better with everyone else.

Mary,

The OS will use free memory for file caching disk. This is why you see the memory usage grow over time. When an application requests memory the OS will release the memory it is using for file caching. With all that free memory lying around the OS figures it will put it to good use until an app needs it.

This is the way Solaris and Linux work. I don't see why BSD Unix ( OS X) wouldn't behave the same way.

I've had my 1Ghz 12" Powerbook for almost a year now and have had no problems with the OS X operating system. I love the sleep feature and not having to boot up. In the year I've had the Powerbook, it has been intentionally turned off ONCE and that was at the hands of a jealous windows-user just to irk me. Other than that, it's been in sleep mode--just close the lid and go! (Well, ya gotta wait for the sleep light to come on so that you know your drives aren't active).

To save on available memory and just to make things tidy, I quit an application as soon as I'm done with it. Like if I'm running SketchUp or Form-Z, I'll clear out docked times, close out Mail, Safari and just for good measure empty the trash. With the monitor dimmed and if I'm just working in Word or Safari, I can get around 4 hours from my battery. When I'm out at classes I use battery power then when I come home I plug it in so that its ready to use the next day.

Interesting that no one mentions backing up. At night I plug in an outboard firewire drive, run carbon copy cloner. Then I go to sleep. I have the preferences set to never sleep on inactivity, screen to sleep after 20 minutes, and hard drive to sleep when possible. That way I'm always backed up, the chron jobs run in the middle of the night while the screen is off and drives nap when they can. Of course when I close the lid it sleeps while I'm carrying it around or when I leave my desk at work. That's with the power adapter plugged in. When I use the battery I've got the preference to sleep in a short time of inactivity. Check this out to get information on your battery condition.
http://www.mitt-eget.com/
I back up every night as I've been in this business long enough to see more than one hard drive fail. Out of the last seven laptops I've had I've only lost one drive to mechanical failure but lost no data as I'm backed up. I'm more paranoid about the company unix box where I backup in ten sets of media rotating then over a ten day period, saving one set at the end of each month and inserting a new one in its place. I've seen the roof leak on the machine, a torando and other problems. Nothing like being backed up. Oh, the media get stored in a fireproff vault.

i forgot where the 'last restart time' information is found. someone tell me, how long is my iBook been on since restarting ?

you can run 'uptime' from terminal or there are several preference panes such as uptimeinmenubar that show it in your well, you get the idea.

http://www.delamusse.com/UptimeInMenuBar/

If restart is not consider a shutdown of system, then I'm consider never shutdown my PowerBook. Yet, I just perform a restart only when update or perform full maintenance and cache cleaning.

The reasons that make me switch to Apple is that; stable sleep mode and virus free. So if I told you one day, you got to shutdown your system when you're not using it, I'm talking about "W" laptop.

for "house cleaning" i've used macjanitor <http://personalpages.tds.net/~brian_hill/macjanitor.html> since i got my first iBook back in '01. it has a clean, simple interface. i also just sleep my current iBook, which i have done since using the first one.

Lordee.

Do people really run System 9 by choice anymore?

I understand if you have super old hardware? But OSX is unbelievable at this point, and Tiger is going to take it to the next level.

OS9 was great, but man alive, it's time to join the new millenium.

Re: Bill
The other often brought up issue is the overnight cron scripts. What do you do about those? I use Macaroni because it runs maintenance even if the machine was asleep at their scheduled time. I believe Macaroni is essential to true unlimited uptime.

Check out http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2001/12/14/terminal_one.html for a great intro into your terminal app. It uses modifying your crontab file to run at a more convenient time. Hope this helps.

While I usually just put my PB 17 (1.33) to sleep, I've occasionally had problems waking it (dark screen). I noticed these are more likely to occur when the power cord is unplugged and the PB is low on battery power. It used to happen about 20% of the time, though now it's down to 5-10% after the recent updates. Not too big a deal, now anyway, though the last time it happened I was trying to show off the "instant on" feature to a Windoze user--that was awkward!

I rarely restart, as the author of the article mentions, mostly due to system upates.

I do however log out twice daily for travelling. No point in having even the basic security enabled if a 'bad guy' can just open the lid after 'acquiring' the unit and get full access.

I prefer to put a few obstacles in their path - that is if they got past the rottweiller in the first place.

Have a Great day!
pete.

With my iBook G3 & 256MB (my first Mac after years of Windows drudgery), I feel like the 'office junior' in this conversation. I rarely shut down, and find the instant up-and-at-'em of OS X to be just fantastic.

The only time I do shutdown is at the weekend - I work from home, and with that instant start-up, there'd be too much temptation to do just a little more tinkering, eating away my family time.

Didn't know about the battery issues though. I generally run plugged in, with probably weekly trips out and on battery. Seems OK for now (27 months), with about 70% of the original battery life-span. My business partner's battery died after about 18 months though - is that something to do with his usage profile (tends to do a lot more unplugged), or just bad luck?

Karl.

Don´t let your machine sleep during the nights!
Just let your display and network connection sleep.

Os X does it maintenance during the early morning hours.. If the machine is off or at sleep it does not do it´s neccessary maintenance duties. (daily, weekly and monthly). Unix (=Os X) is nice because it can keep itself fit automatically. If you let your machine sleep or turn it off and it can´t keep itself in shape then you have to run software like Onyx everyday.

If you force your machine to get fat and do not run maintenance software the you search for trouble,

the only reason i restart i to reduce my hd volume. i dont know why if restart after 3days awake my hd space get more space abour 3 gig. can u help me?

Do the same thing on my Pismo. Only restart for updates. Use wired lan, power and large monitor at work and wireless, battery and the laptop display at home. No configuration changes needed at all. Getting well over 5 hours of battery life from a high capacity NewerTech battery with full screen brightness. Great to have quick access to my email where ever I go.

Took the Pismo into a coffee shop that just added wireless. Lifted the lid, pulled down the Airport menu to select their network and was working literally within 10-seconds. Pretty amazing from a 5 year old laptop. Fantastic OS and hardware design.

I wish Apple would advertize this functionality more. I am amazed at how long my Windoze laptop takes to boot up or shutdown. Even the "Standby" and "Hibernate" functions take seemingly forever. Anyone else ever compare their Mac to a Windows machine in this way?
---
Not to get into a religious argument.. tee hee.. but a Christian once asked me.. what would it take for you to believe in God. What would you have to SEE to prove that God existed...

At first it seems like an easy question.. well if some guy came on TV and said he was Jesus then everyone would say, okay, let's all be Christians..

Er, no.. if some guy was on TV saying he was a Christian you'd think he was a mental patient who broke out..

I said to her, well, maybe if I saw some birds flying in the sky that formed the word GOD or JESUS or something..maybe then I would believe...

but the more I thought about it, I've seen incredible things in my life, and if I saw some word in the sky, or a cloud, I would just think it was an amazing FLUKE, and get on with my day.. If I saw a pattern of birds forming a word, I would say .. 'wow that's amazing'.. not, 'wow I believe'

why doesn't apple tell people about things like no shutdown, no virii, etc etc..

because if PC users don't believe now, telling them there are no virii would just amaze them into saying, "pfft, what a fluke." or "pffft.. dinky marketshare" or "yeah, no viruses YET"

using a mac, is different, you can't deny it.. you can deny endlessly if someone tells you something (especially the MAKERS of said product) but using it is different.. that's what Apple Stores, in the biggest cities in the world, are for.

I've been running the original OS X since 2001. I'm too poor to afford the upgrades. I have not restarted or shutdown since the last Jaguar update was available. Which means, my computer has been running for almost 2 continous years!!! Beat that... BTW: My setup is the dinasour clamshell iBook (the special & last edition before the solid white colors).

Blueberry G3/400 iMac here running 10.3.5 w/256 mb of RAM and aside from it getting a bit warm after about 12 hrs, I notice no problems letting it sleep. Plus the glowing button on these during sleep looks like something on the X-files