The new ParentDish: helping raise kids of all ages
AOL Tech
Posts with tag sleep

SmartSleep 1.0 Beta 1: Your Macbook or Macbook Pro will sleep smarter

SmartSleep 1.0 is a Mac preference pane designed for the MacBook or MacBook Pro that will help your computer get the most from its Da Vincian cat naps.

SmartSleep sets a schedule for your Mac laptop's sleep patterns: when your battery has a high level, SmartSleep sets the computer to sleep only (sans hibernation). If your battery goes below 20% (the default setting, user customizable) then SmartSleep will tell your machine to sleep and hibernate. If your battery sneaks below 5%, you should really find an outlet -- but in case you can't, SmartSleep will set the computer to hibernate only (thus preserving the battery completely).

SmartSleep also allows you to choose any one sleep setting as the default, useful if you want your computer to always sleep and hibernate, or hibernate only, etc...

Now some of you might be asking: if it ain't broke, why try to fix it?

SmartSleep was created to free the user from certain limitations of each individual sleep setting. If your computer is set to sleep only, for example, you cannot change the battery, because the battery is needed to keep the contents of the memory. If your computer is set to sleep and hibernate, there might be a significant delay before your computer actually goes to sleep because the contents of the memory are being saved to disk. SmartSleep maximizes the effectiveness of each setting to give you the fastest response time based upon your computer's current power state.

SmartSleep is a free download, Mac OS X only, and is best suited for MacBooks and MacBook Pros (trust us, you won't get much out of the program if you're on an iMac or Mac Mini).

[via Softpedia]

Wake Assist for the snooze-loving Mac

Wake AssistWake Assist is a free utility (which runs as a daemon) that aims to fix a common problem that occurs on some Macs: the Mac is sleeping and when the user attempts to wake it, it rolls over and hits the snooze button. On our Macbook Pro for instance, we often open the lid after it has been sleeping only to receive a black screen and a still sleeping Mac.

The Wake Assist download comes with a .pkg for installing the daemon and an uninstall shell script should you choose to remove the utility. The daemon works by sending mouse clicks to the OS to show/hide the Apple menu when you attempt to wake the computer if it detects no user activity first.

[Via MacUpdate]

Nudge your Mac awake with Jiggler

Jiggler
The energy saver and screen saver settings on the Mac are great for powering down the computer when it's not in use. It can be a real annoyance, though, when they kick in unexpectedly and put your computer to sleep -- especially if you're monitoring an IRC channel or burning a CD.

Jiggler is a small freeware application specifically designed to keep your Mac from falling asleep by wiggling your mouse at whatever intervals you choose. You can also set Jiggler to run when certain conditions are met, such as music playing in iTunes or when the computer is in obvious "work mode" (the CPU usage is at least 50%). When it engages, the cursor moves around for a couple of seconds and the app's icon flashes on the screen to let you know it's working.

Jiggler is a small app with a small footprint (around 300 KB), that comes without a lot of unecessary bells and whistles. It performed flawlessly in our trials, though, so if you're looking for a way to keep your Mac awake while your doing other things, give Jiggler a whirl (or a wiggle?).

Schedule a PC reboot, shutdown, or hibernate with WinOFF

WinOFF
So you're in the middle of downloading a large file, or sending a huge batch of photos to your mom. The file transfer's going to take another 40 minutes, and you really want to hit the sack. But you don't want to leave your computer on all night sucking up energy.

WinOFF is a nifty utility that lets you schedule all sorts of power-related actions. You can set your computer to shutdown 60 minutes from now. Or you can tell it a specific time to shut down. There's even an option to shut down the system when your CPU is idle, under the assumption that this means your computer is probably finished with whatever task you set for it.

Don't want to do a complete shutdown? You can put your computer in suspend or hibernate mode. Or if you just want to make sure your PC is fresh and ready to go in the morning, you can schedule a middle of the night reboot.

[via CyberNet]

Midnight - deep sleep dashboard widget

MidnightMidnight is a widget for the Mac's dashboard widget engine that gives you the ability to put your Mac to sleep with the click of a button. To be honest, if that's all this widget did, it wouldn't be worthy of a post, but this one does one more interesting thing. It can hibernate your system, much like a Windows computer can hibernate.

Most Mac users aren't even aware that their Macs are capable of hibernating, although they may have heard the term "deep sleep" before. A sleeping Mac is analogous to a Windows machine that is in Standby mode. While it is technically off, a small amount of power is being drawn to keep the system's memory alive. In Windows, you have the option of choosing to go into hibernation mode, which takes a bit longer since all of the contents of your system's memory are then written to the hard drive. This allows the system to turn completely off and draw no power, since unlike RAM, the hard drive does not require power to retain information.

A Mac's deep sleep mode is like a PC's hibernation mode. The big difference is that Macs don't expose this to the user, but rather as might be expected based on Apple's "simplify everything" philosophy it simply decides on its own when to use each mode.

So if you're a control freak and would like to save a bit of battery life when stuffing your MacBook into your backpack and heading out on the road, have a look at this little dashboard widget that lets you force your machine into deep sleep mode. You'll have to turn on the configuration option the first time you use it, but after that you can sleep a little easier that your Mac's battery isn't wasting precious energy keeping your Mac in sleep mode when it ought to be in a deep slumber.

Download Squad Features


Geeking out on the squadcast. Tune in and then tune out.

View Posts By

  • Windows Only
  • Mac Only
  • Linux Only
Categories
Audio (830)
Beta (325)
Blogging (685)
Browsers (18)
Business (1361)
Design (803)
Developer (925)
E-mail (511)
Finance (127)
Fun (1734)
Games (544)
Internet (4752)
Kids (129)
Office (491)
OS Updates (574)
P2P (175)
Photo (457)
Podcasting (167)
Productivity (1298)
Search (245)
Security (532)
Social Software (1083)
Text (436)
Troubleshooting (51)
Utilities (1899)
Video (1009)
VoIP (138)
web 2.0 (728)
Web services (3310)
Companies
Adobe (182)
AOL (48)
Apache Foundation (1)
Apple (466)
Canonical (35)
Google (1296)
IBM (28)
Microsoft (1304)
Mozilla (455)
Novell (19)
OpenOffice.org (43)
PalmSource (11)
Red Hat (17)
Symantec (14)
Yahoo! (350)
License
Commercial (667)
Shareware (194)
Freeware (1944)
Open Source (895)
Misc
Podcasts (13)
Features (380)
Hardware (167)
News (1107)
Holiday Gift Guide (15)
Platforms
Windows (3572)
Windows Mobile (421)
BlackBerry (44)
Macintosh (2047)
iPhone (82)
Linux (1569)
Unix (78)
Palm (176)
Symbian (121)
Columns
Ask DLS (10)
Analysis (24)
Browser Tips (293)
DLS Podcast (5)
Googleholic (195)
How-Tos (97)
DLS Interviews (19)
Design Tips (14)
Mobile Minute (125)
Mods (68)
Time-Wasters (374)
Weekend Review (38)
Imaging Tips (32)

RESOURCES

RSS NEWSFEEDS

Powered by Blogsmith

Sponsored Links

Advertise with Download Squad

Most Commented On (60 days)

Recent Comments

Urlesque Headlines

BloggingStocks Tech Coverage

More from AOL Money and Finance

More Tech Coverage

Weblogs, Inc. Network

Other Weblogs Inc. Network blogs you might be interested in: