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Tragedies

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 4, 2007
374
0
Melbourne, Australia
I'm getting my iMac tommorow (so excited!) and am wondering, when I get it, will it be better for iMac to be left in standby mode overnight or to turn it off completely?
 
Standy Mode. I don't think there's a need to turn it off unless you're not using it for several days (I'd hate to think that;))
 
Definitely standby. There is really no need to shut it off. Unlike in the old Windows day where your system was assured to crash when you put it into suspend to ram, it works just beautifully on the mac. And I'm really annoyed now to wait for PCs until they are ready..
Unlike Windows the Apple human interface guidelines strongly point out that Macs are not supposed to reboot for several days/weeks/month. So most programs are able to handle those cases way better than in Windows. Like audiumX.
Even the power consumption in sleep is extremly low. I have looked it up in http://images.apple.com/environment/resources/pdf/APES_24-in_iMac_10-09-07.pdf and the power consumption in sleep mode is 2.7W! I can not express how suprised I am to see that because some dump VCRs or Television use more when they are switched off...
Switching it off will "only" half the consumption down to 1.3W
 
The Macs don't consume a heck of a lot when asleep, and wake from sleep is a lot quicker than a cold boot, login, and opening apps.

Plus it keeps the apps and windows where you left them.
 
Putting a somewhat tangential question out there related to this topic, can one charge an iphone or ipod off an iMac when it's in standby?
 
Restart

You should at least restart the imac once a week or every 10 days to clear up the ram cache as it tends to build up and slow the system down, unless you have 4 gigs of ram then you don't need to do often. It all comes down to what apps you are using. Enjoy!
 
Yep. I vote for sleep.

My iMac is rarely if ever shutdown.

The only kind of mac I don't recommend sleeping is notebooks (of course for short periods of time you should). I used to sleep my Powerbook for days, but it killed the batteries. They'd have like 50 percent capacity in 1 year. Cause I use it like 1 time a week, and sleeping really hurt the battery life span. Now that I shut it down, the battery isn't losing as much of its capacity.
 
Putting a somewhat tangential question out there related to this topic, can one charge an iphone or ipod off an iMac when it's in standby?

I was browsing through Apple support section, and the response was that the new iMacs should let you charge iPod via usb while it's in a standby mode.
 
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