“Companies have long known the benefits of making sure their workers get a good night’s sleep–and they would be wise to let their PCs do the same, Microsoft says,” Ina Fried reports for CNET News.com
“With Windows Vista, Microsoft plans to put machines to sleep after an hour of inactivity. While businesses and consumers can change that setting, the software maker said that they would be smart to let their computers nod off,” Fried reports.
Fried reports, “The company has done work in the upcoming Vista update to make sure that the PC can rest more easily. With Windows XP, programs could veto a user’s request for the PC to go to sleep. In some cases, that meant that laptop owners thought they had put a PC to sleep, only to discover a few hours later that the machine had remained on and their notebook’s battery had been drained.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Bill” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: There goes Microsoft, innovatin’ again. Quick sleep tip for Mac OS X: Command-Option and then hold the Eject button for about 2 seconds. Sleep tight! More info about sleep and idle modes in Mac OS X here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Pirillo: Microsoft’s Windows Vista will double Apple’s market share – October 13, 2006
What if Microsoft held a Windows Vista party and nobody came? – October 13, 2006
CNET: Microsoft’s Windows Vista still not ready for prime time – October 12, 2006
Thurrott: ‘You don’t need Windows Vista’ – October 11, 2006
Microsoft’s Windows Vista spyware may prompt users to upgrade to Apple Mac – October 09, 2006
Windows Vista gaming will be 10-15 percent slower than XP – October 09, 2006
Analyst: Microsoft’s new activation scheme will give users another reason not to upgrade to Vista – October 05, 2006
IT Managers: Do you need Windows Vista or should you ‘Get a Mac?” – September 11, 2006
Infoworld: Microsoft’s WIndows Vista not so revolutionary after all – September 11, 2006
Pirillo: Windows Vista RC1 disappointing, schizophrenic, disordered, inconsistent, and sad – September 07, 2006
Key Microsoft exec exits as clock ticks down on oft-delayed, much pared-down Windows Vista release – September 06, 2006
$399 for Windows Vista Ultimate?! (Hint: Get a Mac) – August 29, 2006
Development approaches of Mac OS X Leopard vs. Windows Vista yield very different results – August 15, 2006
Analyst: Apple’s new Mac OS X Leopard sets new bar, leaves Microsoft’s Vista in the dust – August 08, 2006
Symantec researcher: At this time, there are no file-infecting viruses that can infect Mac OS X – July 13, 2006
Sophos: Apple Mac OS X’s security record unscathed; Windows Vista malware just a matter of time – July 07, 2006
Computerworld: Microsoft Windows Vista a distant second-best to Apple Mac OS X – June 02, 2006
Computerworld: Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard’s ‘Time Machine’ is truly remarkable – October 05, 2006
InfoWorld’s Yager: Apple will take computing to the next level with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard – September 06, 2006
Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard is 64-bit done right, unlike Microsoft’s Windows Vista kludge – August 14, 2006
Mac OS X Leopard sneak peek highlights – August 09, 2006
Analyst: Apple’s new Mac OS X Leopard sets new bar, leaves Microsoft’s Vista in the dust – August 08, 2006
Inside Apple Mac OS X Leopard’s ‘Spaces’ – August 07, 2006
Take a ride in Apple Mac OS X Leopard’s ‘Time Machine’ – August 07, 2006
Apple previews Mac OS X Leopard featuring Time Machine, Spaces, enhanced Mail & iChat, and more – August 07, 2006
Apple previews Mac OS X Server Leopard; to ship in spring 2007 – August 07, 2006
whoo! a “sleep” option! will the wonders ever cease?!
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Wow. i wish my Mac could do that. oh wait….
first THREE. worship me…. and bite me.
MDN thanks for the tip. Ooops now my Mac went to sleep! ZZzzz
And fourth!
I’m such a dick
I bet with MS it never wakes up again!
You gotta feel sad for a company when a “sleep function” feature deserves international reporting.
Now PC’s can dream of being Macs.
TIME FLY´S – you make me lought – but now i will let my Mac sleep a SIESTA
Tempus Fugit?
more like
Tempus Fudgit.
Yes, well I can’t get my QS 2002 800 to wake from sleep. Actually it goes into a coma, forcing a hard restart. I’m buggered if I can find the problem, but I suspect it is some kind of conflict between the SATA card, Belkin Wireless card and OS X 10.4.7 since there were no problems with 10.4.5.
Any tips on trouble shooting would be greatly appreciated.
Any tips on trouble shooting would be greatly appreciated.
Why are you having any trouble shooting it?
That’s the first think I thought of doing
Another fine example of MS innovation. R&D money well spent! I wonder what other 5 year old technology they can come up with on their own?
I had that on my first Mac (which I still use) back in 2001 on OS 9. I’m sure it was around before that! Are they introducing double-clicking too?
It took them about 10 years to develop a sleep function in their OS? Hilarious! Man, those guys are sharp!
“I bet with MS it never wakes up again!”
Oh, it wakes up again, but only after you pay a re-activation fee.
I love this line:
“With Windows Vista, Microsoft plans to put machines to sleep after an hour of inactivity.”
Note that YOU don’t put your computer to sleep, it’s Microsoft that does it for you!
What a frightening thought!
My Windows crate at work needs 50 minutes to start up after a good night sleep.
The rest of the day it isn’t productive either.
Amount of money to develop Vista: Millions
Number of Man hours to develop Vista: Thousands
Number of “journalists” bought to hype up Vista: Hundreds
Releasing features that have been in OSX for over 5 years: Priceless
The best thing with these articles is:
The comparison to Apple. You can’t beat that type of exopsure. It’s not like this from Apple.
Hey, MDN, thanks for the tip. I just put my laptop to sleep by closing the lid, but didn’t know there was a keyboard shortcut for my desktop (I’d always chosen it from the apple menu). Cool!
I don’t know about you, but “Sleep” is one of the least reliable features on my Macs.
I had a G4, and now a G5 iMac that both continually had trouble going to sleep. Probably having to do with USB connectivity.
Don’t have the problem with my Macbook Pro, but all the same, it is really hard to be smug about a feature that (in my experience) sucks.
Out.
The king of the me-toos: Microsoft.
Vista snores.
Big deal. I put my PC to sleep years ago. I told the kids it when to a nerd ranch where it could play with other PCs and breath fresh country air.
MW: ‘good’ as in “Good Riddance”.
now, WAAAAIT a minnit kiddies! the actual, real, original Tempus (me) did NOT make the third post.
any post following the second were lyin’ cheatin’ cheese eatin’ wannabes. as for the insulting posts… i’ll take a page from the third….
bite me.
and i wonder how many of people’s peecee’s will crash when they try to wake them up again
…and i wonder how many of people’s peecee’s will crash when they try to wake them up again
that’s if they wake up again.
Yep, and that great philanthropist Billy Gates says its good for global warming too! They’re helping the world get better and better, like Microsoft always has done…
Until you realise that Vista (the SS Vesa) will use up great slugs of power as it thunders and snorts its way though masses and masses of processing power…
..just to run Aero.
Any news on how Vista users put laptops to sleep ?
btw
MDN’s sleep shortcut doesn’t need the eject key to be held down for two seconds, I always simply tap the key combination and walk away.
Actually, computers should be shut off when not in use. Standby power losses account for between 5-15% of electricity use in the US, amounting to the output of 26 power stations.
Of course, sleep mode is better than on at full power, so this is a step in the right direction.
No matter what, the user experience is much better with a windows machine turned off.
You can put your PC on Standby…
Sure, you can put a PC on standby, and then watch it lock up and go to a blue screen when it tries to wake up…
My PC has been sleeping for almost four years. Perhaps I’m working on a record or something.
I can see it now….
“Top ten tips on how to recover from a Vista machine from a vegatative state….”
“Hackers cause massive nap attack across nation”
“Rip Vista Winkle”
ok I’m done.
You can also set your Mac to sleep by pressing the power button. The option is in the Energy Saver preference pane, I do believe. This is a much better shortcut, imho.
This is also the way I put my Mac to sleep in OS 9. Though it does wake quite a bit faster under OS X.
My new iMac is such a beauty. Too bad she is such a sleepy head
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How can you when a PC has been sleeping?
It wakes up with morning ‘would not’.
My old PC would go to sleep (or hibernate as they called it), and never wake up. (this was a known MS issue) BTW-I am sorry, but “put to sleep” is a really bad way to phrase it (but appropriate).
For my powerbook, I just close the lid (btw-what happens when you close the lid on a PC laptop), and go. The only real problems with sleep I have had is the monitor sometimes goes really dark when I wake it up (I thought the computer had shut down before I realized it), but I haven’t had that for a long time.
Spring-the time of year when PCs come out of their year long hibernation
Sleep has been a feature in Windows for a long time and as long as the motherboard’s chipset supports it (and that is a prerequisite for installing Vista) it works fine. It’s configurable, so all Microsoft is announcing is a new default configuration.
Windows can also hibernate, which means that all the memory gets written to disk so the machine needs no power to keep its current state. That is particularly useful with a UPS. You can hibernate Windows manually, or you can set it up to hibernate when the UPS battery goes down to a certain threshold.
Mac laptops hibernate also (deep sleep) when the battery runs down too far to sustain sleep.
The main edge that OS X has over Windows is that in OS X, these features are automatic, or more easily discovered, or have a better user interface than in Windows. Vista even has something like Time Machine, but it is obscure and I doubt a run-of-the-mill user would have the courage to try it.
” that meant that laptop owners thought they had put a PC to sleep”
Dialogue of two PeeCee owners:
“My Dell has contracted Vista, I’m gonna put it to sleep!”
“It’s probably for the better, the poor laptop was suffering enough!”
PCs running Vista will have gooey, Dali-esque, translucent nightmares mixed with longing fantasies of being OS X. A gadget cramp will rudely awaken them. From then on they will struggle to have the same dream of running wild with the big cats. Some will slip into comas and their owners will be declared brain dead. It will be known worldwide as Catatonic Vistiosis. Years later, the Gates Foundation will invest millions to research the cause.
How can you tell when a man hasn’t been sleeping?
He can’t tell a tale about tail.
What a coincidence…..Windows puts me to sleep.
My PC went to sleep then had a wet dream and Zuned all over itself, now it refuses to wake up.
My PC went to sleep, had a wet dream, Zuned all over itself and now refuses to wake up.
Noth that anyone reads this far down except me, but …
I’m running Vista RC2 on a MacBook partition (don’t ask). I was hoping RC2 would fix the fact that SLEEP DOESN’T WORK RIGHT in Vista. No go. I have to hibernate every time.
Somewhere on the Web is a Microsoft Developer Team presentation (pretty slick) about all the innovations they’ve put into their ‘sleep’ technology.
They just forgot the part about MAKING IT WORK!!!
I’m going to sleep now…..
wake me up when SP4 is released…..in 2012
Yep, I installed the Vista RC2 on my MacBook Pro via Boot Camp. I noticed that when I closed the laptop in Vista it went right to sleep like PowerBooks do.
However, MacBooks and MacBook Pros don’t just go to sleep – they go to sleep, then after a few seconds they write out their RAM to the hard drive (true hibernation), then when that’s done they resume sleeping.
See for yourself: close a MacBook Pro while it’s running. Wait for the sleep light to enter into its pulsing light pattern, after the MacBook Pro has written its RAM out to the hard drive. Now remove the battery and wait for the sleep light to turn off. Replace the battery and hit the power button – you’ll see a dimmed-out greyscale version of your desktop from when you closed the laptop, along with a progress bar as your RAM is loaded from the hard drive. Awesome!
“Command-Option and then hold the Eject button for about 2 seconds.”
You don’t have to hold the Eject button for two seconds, hold down Command-Option and then just tap the Eject button and in a second or two later your machine will go to sleep.
BTW, Command-Control-Eject to restart, quite handy as well.
My comment to the CNet article…
For those Mac users wanting to know how to use the Energy Saver Preference to easily schedule their computer to automatically Start-Up, Shut-Down, or Sleep (display/CPU/both), you can find it in the Finder’s Help menu or here…
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh1614.html
Don’t forget, you can always open System Preferences and type in “sleep” in the search field, and your Mac will highlight where to click (Energy Saver).
You will also find many options available such as “Wake for Ethernet network administrator access”.
It is nice to see Windows users finally getting the features they deserve. If you want to see Vista 3.0 for 2014, stop by any Apple store today.
…arrogant? Perhaps, but the fact that the article made such a huge deal about a “sleep mode” (XP didn’t have it?!!!) deserves an equally ridiculous reply.
I’m not sure if this is a Mac problem or not but my G4 tower won’t sleep if AOL is running (it thinks the network is running). Also if I install a USB PCI card, the computer will not sleep because the card will not let it, so I pulled the card. Also when it does sleep it does not always wake up peripherals on the other side of my USB hub. I have a Wacom Graphire tablet whose driver fails when I have more than 2 users logged in, sleep or not. Go figure!
In my country, computer put you to sleep.
<zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz> huh, wha… oh, m$ story… mmmmkay…. <tuck><zzzzzzzzzzzzz>…
I hate to admit it, but I think Vista will actually be a big success for Microsucks. 90% of the computer users out there don’t know a Mac from a PC. When they see the graphics and eye candy of Vista (blatantly ripped off from OS X) they will all start to drool. It’s sad but true. Apple needs to start advertising TODAY!
Q,
No squirting allowed on this site!
How to set a “hibernate” mode on a Winblows PC in 8 “easy” steps requiring trips to 3 different control panels. God, I hate Windoze!
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/mobility/getstarted/hibernate.mspx
Why go through the hassle of command-option, eject for two seconds?
For desktops, hit the power button.
For laptops, close the lid.
:shrug:
Vista flexes it’s power… and the collateral damage mounts.
According to the article, Verdiem, a company who provides power management for PC networks has been providing “sleep” mode for PCs for years in the corporate and education sectors.
For $20 bucks a seat and $2 maintenance fee per year per seat thereafter.
Verdiem also claims every PC generates 440 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions every year because of their inability to sleep.
In other words Microsoft’s OS pollutes the air we breathe! result: MacDailyNews
What’s the big deal? My Windows 98 box (which is used just for gaming) has a sleep function. Nothing new here.
Oh wait, are we talking one that actually works???
Peace.
Just a note: The Belkin USB 2.0 card that I have causes sleep issues with QuickSilver PowerMacs. If anything is connected to the USB2 port when you put the Mac to sleep, it won’t go all the way to sleep (fan stays on), and then you won’t be able to wake it up. Workaround: unplug USB appliances before putting to sleep. Since I use the USB2 only for my iPod, it’s not a problem.
No wonder Windows has been so erratic — all these years it has been sleep deprived!
Good thing Microsoft is copying Apple. The Hibernation mode in XP never really worked consistently. Many times, I couldn’t log in after coming out of hibernation. The computer would keep saying I put in the wrong password, and I would have to re-boot the machine.
Microsoft should rename Vista to Microsoft Copycat.
I don’t understand this article, the MDN comment, or most of the comments above. Windows has had a sleep (“Stand By”) function for as long as I can remember, and a “hybernate” feature at least since XP was released in 2001. Both work fine on properly configured hardware – I’ve never had an issue on a wide range of machines. However, they do assume BIOS support and a properly configured BIOS, which cannot be taken for granted.
The advantage Apple has here is that they ship the motherboard and modifying the BIOS settings (ie. open firmware settings) is non-trivial. Therefore “it just works”. They same is true of a PC from a decent OEM, providing you don’t then fuck around with the settings.
The only difference with Vista is that the OS overrules the application when it wants to sleep. That might be a good thing – it could also be bad. I can imagine some applications that I would want to overrule the OS – such as an ftp download client, for instance. It all depends on how intelligent the OS is in deciding when to overrule a client that needs the machine to remain awake.
Anyway, no news here. Windows has had a perfectly functioning sleep function for years. This article simply mentions a minor modification in implementation – why they thought it newsworthy, God alone knows.
It’s amazing how many people know so little as to think this is a “New” feature. it’s existed for years.
Furthermore those who bash Microsoft for not having done it years ago or copying Apple are just showing their ignorance.
Shouldn’t need to hold the eject button for two seconds when doing command+option+eject, it’ll work by just pushing that key combination.
For those who may not know, the Lisa (~1983) had a kind of sleep function – so it’s good to see PCs finally catching up.
Oh hey putting your mac to sleep is great unless you have any services running on it. FTP Server? Not when the damn thing’s asleep.
Windows might go to sleep but try this trick.
Log out of XP so no users are logged in at all, and after a while the computer should go to sleep by itself. (At least our Dells at work do anway.)
Come back later and hit the Escape key to wake it up and it will display the “Hit Command+Alt+Delete to log in” dialogue box. Then, rather than going to a log in screen, it says “Windows is now shutting down”.
Of course! I didn’t really want to log in at all, I wanted to shut it down so I could start it up again to log in and waste 5 minutes of my life. Yes, that makes perfect sense.
Stupid Windows!
Windows may have a sleep function and a hibernate function, but you can only have one or the other. With Mac OS X, your laptop has the best of both functions. Close the laptop and it sleeps – when you open it later it is instantly on. However, if your battery runs out while it’s sleeping, when you power back up you’ll find that it secretly hibernated – even though your memory lost all power, your Mac cleverly saves your memory to the hard drive when it sleeps.
Windows simply cannot do that.
“I hate to admit it, but I think Vista will actually be a big success for Microsucks. 90% of the computer users out there don’t know a Mac from a PC. When they see the graphics and eye candy of Vista (blatantly ripped off from OS X) they will all start to drool. It’s sad but true. Apple needs to start advertising TODAY!”
Hey, I think you’re onto something. Are you one of the few of these commentators who actually ventures outside of MacDailyNews?
Notice how the article made no mention of Mac OS X. Nor will any other. There won’t be any hooplah about MS copying Apple, the majority of the world will come to believe that these are all cool new features that came right out of Redmond.
Apple’s not going to advertise shit but that feminine “Mac Guy” as they’ve been doing. Steve Jobs is going to play his smug bastard card like always while it’s Microsoft that puts some serious marketing muscle behind the Vista operating system (or so they claim).
You guys should step outside of the internet for once and see that nobody gives a crap about Leopard while Vista has a full-page preview on page 86 of last week’s TIME. Strangely enough, it mentioned Apple two or three times, quite minimally concerning graphics and photo software. That’s about the most you can hope for, a complementary yet easily forgettable “Vista has a Mac-like feel” shout out here and again. Nothing more.
RMN
“Windows may have a sleep function and a hibernate function, but you can only have one or the other. “
Again showing your ignorance, all modern PCs can either “Stand By” (read sleep) or “Hibernate”. This works for laptops and desktops. Either can be chosen from the shutdown dialog. By default you vendor will have chosen when happens when you shut the lid, press the power button or press the sleep button(which some laptops have, most desktops don’t), but that’s changable in software if you don’t like their choice.