Hi, i have mac mini and when i put it into sleep and leave it, when i came back and wake up my mini, i can see new mails in my Mail, Adium still connected but MSN messenger disconnected. So is actually a sleeping mini is not fully sleep?
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What's actually mac doing when it's sleeping?
- Thread starter sunrobby
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How do you put it to sleep. If I just leave my Mac for a while, the screen sleeps before the rest of the computer meaning network connections and apps are still active and running. Could it just be that only the screen is sleeping? 
Adium reconnects when you take it off sleep, even before you put in your password. Same with Mail, if it's open, even before you put in your password it'll download any new mail. MSN on the other hand, will just piss you off with a stupid message asking you if you want to retry.
i put it to sleep by many ways, leave it for at least 2 hours (i have set my mac to sleep after two hours idle) or by choosing apple, sleep. So im sure it's really sleep because the light is pulsing. And i can assure you that before it sleeps, no new mail on my Mail. So maybe what really happen is just like Max on Macs said, when the screen to enter the password popped, the network alive and connect adium and Mail fetch new mail.. Thanks
when it's asleep, it's dreaming.
seriously though, i think it's turned off, with it's state frozen. and uses a tiny amount of energy to track whether the lid is opened triggering the computer to return to it's original working state.
i really don't know, all i know is that everything is nearlly turned off.
seriously though, i think it's turned off, with it's state frozen. and uses a tiny amount of energy to track whether the lid is opened triggering the computer to return to it's original working state.
i really don't know, all i know is that everything is nearlly turned off.
I believe that when it sleeps, it takes a snapshot of whats in the RAM, CPU Registers etc and uses a trickle of power to keep the RAM in that state. This means that when you wake the computer, it just starts from where it left off.
Isnt sleep same as suspend? so, motherboard/memory is still active but everything else is turned off (even HD) to save huge ammount of power.
When sleeping, a Mac is still powered on, but the HD and screen are shut off and the RAM and main boards are powered up, just to preserve the contents of RAM and running applications. Networking is suspended, but if you enable wake for administrator access it is listening. It still uses power [from AC or battery for laptops] but at a much slower rate. It is still possible to drain the battery in a notebook while sleeping.
primalman said:
Is that not what I said except using different words? If you're referring to the fact I didn't specifically mention the fact that the HDD/Monitor etc are shut off, I was assuming most people are aware of the fact their HDD shuts off and their monitor goes blank when they put their Mac to sleep. Simply put, it keeps the system state kept in RAM so that you can pick up where you left off. Let's not get all pedantic about the semantics
Co-incidentally, PCs have had the same feature for some time, known as 'Suspend to RAM', rather than 'Suspend to HDD' which is what most Windows PCs do when you select Hibernate. Most PC BIOS's don't have it enabled by default, hence the fact its not really known about.
Here's a link to try to explain it here.
