Different behaviours between MBA and Penryn Macbook (sleep mode and network mapping)?

[Thomi]

Hi there, just out of curiosity: My wife’s new Penryn Macbook falls into sleep mode (with open lid) after a while of inactivity and must be reactivated by pressing the power button.

My MBA only powers of its screen if not used for some minutes. Its hard drive keeps on spinning and so does its CPU, WLAN and everything else as I would guess. The MBA comes back fully operational after just moving the mouse a bit.

Is it a question of settings? I haven’t changed anything accordingly on both machines.

Another difference I experienced: The MBA sometimes has difficulties in re-establishing mapped network folders after opening the lid from sleep mode. Sometimes I even have to reboot the MBA to get access to those resources again. Just ejecting and remap them (appl-K) doesn’t help. Any ideas?

Apart from this I love the MBA and working with it is even more fun then working with the Macbook.

Cheers

 

[edesignuk]

Sounds like the MB is hibernating (a non-default behaviour I believe, not sure why it would be doing it), and the MBA is just set to sleep it's screen (Energy Saver settings).

 

[Thomi]

Sounds like the MB is hibernating (a non-default behaviour I believe, not sure why it would be doing it), and the MBA is just set to sleep it's screen (Energy Saver settings).

Many thanks! I'll do a research about hibernating, or do you know where to find it in the settings? But doesn't hibernating mean that the memory is written to the hard drive? I thought that this would be something different and that it would take some time to wake up from hibernating mode. The MB is immediately back when pressing the power button. Seamed more that it sends its hard drive and other components asleep too, while the MBA just powers off the screen. Is the closed lit mode more a sleep mode in standard configuration (presuming the battery is charged enough) or a hibernating mode?

 

[edesignuk]

I may be wrong about the hibernation, don't take my word on that bit as gospel.

Most things that differ between the two machines are probably just down to their energy saver settings.

 

[kalex]

type pmset -g | grep hibernatemode in terminal on MB

if u get 1 its hibernate, if its 3 then its safe sleep

alex

 

[Thomi]

Alex, I get a 3 on both, the MBA and MB. And the settings for energy saving are exactly the same on both machines. Again: both are falling into sleep mode (blinking LED) when their lid gets closed. But unlike the MBA, the MB even does it with open lid after 10 minutes of inactivity. The MBA only turns of the screen after 10 minutes of doing nothing. Its HD keeps on spinning, the LED doesn’t blink and the keyboards backlight remains on (if Lab Tick is running). Anyone who did a fresh install of OS X on the MBA can confirm the same? I am running the original installation since HD space is not an issue for me. Thanks.

 

[raremage]

Alex, I get a 3 on both, the MBA and MB. And the settings for energy saving are exactly the same on both machines. Again: both are falling into sleep mode (blinking LED) when their lid gets closed. But unlike the MBA, the MB even does it with open lid after 10 minutes of inactivity. The MBA only turns of the screen after 10 minutes of doing nothing. Its HD keeps on spinning, the LED doesn’t blink and the keyboards backlight remains on (if Lab Tick is running). Anyone who did a fresh install of OS X on the MBA can confirm the same? I am running the original installation since HD space is not an issue for me. Thanks.

I did a clean install and can confirm that I do not see what you are seeing.

Sleep works exactly as I would expect.

What if you try changing the energy savings on the MBA to something custom and let the sleep kick in? Once it has, switch back to the settings you want and see if it recalibrates itself?

 

[Thomi]

Thanks. I’ve tried a custom setting with 1 minute instead of 10. But it still didn’t go asleep as long as the lid was open. It would shut of the screen, but that’s it. The HD keeps spinning forever and the keyboard backlit does the same. And by the way: it’s the same in battery mode! If the unit wouldn’t sleep correctly when closing the lid, I would start to believe that something would be wrong with the hardware of my MBA.

 

[Sesshi]

I don't think your wife's MB is hibernating. It is just taking a while to wake up from sleep - I've come across this behaviour on all of my MBP's at some time when I leave them for a while. It sleeps, but you need to prod the power button to get the 'would you like to power off this machine' prompt to show up, in order to wake it. It is actually still in the sleep mode but a keypress doesn't always bring it back. I've never really worked out this behaviour - it doesn't seem like it's hibernating but in sort of limbo.

As for your MBA, it looks like something is preventing it from sleeping. Check running apps.