sleep posts

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Commercial, Freeware

SetPower - time-based power management

by Jason Clarke Sep 16th 2009

SetPower is a utility that lets you choose different power management profiles for your computer based on the time of day. So, if you want your computer to stay on during the day, but sleep overnight, that's not something you can do with the built-in power management functionality in Windows. SetPower adds the ability to control which profile is in effect at a given time.

As the world becomes more environmentally conscious, the benefits of putting your computer to sleep when you might otherwise be inclined to leave it running are obvious. In fact, SetPower claims that you could save up to $10 per month simply by putting your computer to sleep overnight.

One of my pet peeves about software is that developers tend not to pay attention to whether the machine is running on battery power or not. This is particularly troublesome with software that runs jobs like indexing your hard drive, which can take a long time and keep your CPU running at a higher level then it otherwise would. That drains your battery when the software could very simply notice that the machine is on battery power, and wait until it is plugged in again. SetPower pays attention to the battery state, and can alter the machine's power management behavior depending on whether it is plugged in or not.

SetPower is free for home use, and an enterprise license is available at a reasonable $5 per machine.

Tags: battery, battery power, battery state, battery-power, battery-state, BatteryPower, BatteryState, power, power management, power-management, PowerManagement, setpower, sleep, time of day, time-of-day, TimeOfDay

Filed under: Fun, Productivity, Social Software

Sleep.fm: building a better alarm clock?

by Jay Hathaway Sep 14th 2008

Sleep.fm is a personalized alarm service for your computer, phone, or Internet-enabled alarm clock that lets you and your friends leave each other personalized wake-up messages. While I agree that waking up to the radio, the standard alarm clock beep, or some obnoxious fake birds is less than ideal, I'm not sure I'm 100% sold on the utility of Sleep.fm.

I started to get the picture a little more clearly after checking out a video on the Sleep.fm FAQ page. In this little demo, a woman who had missed her Japanese studies the day before wakes up to a teasing message from a friend, in Japanese. I think that says a lot about what Sleep.fm is trying to do: turn the wake-up alarm into another useful way to communicate. I wouldn't object to waking up to a message that all of my meetings for the day were cancelled, for example, or finding out about a change of lunch plans with a friend.

Isn't that what we have voicemail, email, text messages and Twitter for, though? I agree with the Sleep.fm theory that waking up is personal, but for me that means just wanting to be left alone. If you're the kind of person who likes to jump right into the day with new information, someone who checks email and rss feeds before even getting out of bed, this might be a good new tool in your arsenal. The site is taking signups now for its upcoming relaunch.

Tags: alarm, alarm-clock, alarmclock, messages, sleep, sleep.fm, wakeup

Filed under: Utilities, Macintosh, Freeware, Beta

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

by Simon Kerbel Feb 27th 2008

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]

Tags: hibernate, Mac, sleep, SmartSleep

Filed under: Utilities, Macintosh, Shareware

Wake Assist for the snooze-loving Mac

by Todd Ritter Feb 20th 2008

Wake 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]

Tags: hibernate, sleep, wake

Filed under: Utilities, Macintosh, Productivity, Shareware

Nudge your Mac awake with Jiggler

by Lisa Hoover Sep 4th 2007

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?).

Tags: freeware, jiggler, mac, sleep

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Freeware

Schedule a PC reboot, shutdown, or hibernate with WinOFF

by Brad Linder Aug 15th 2007

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]

Tags: hibernate, power management, PowerManagement, restart, shutdown, sleep, winOFF

Filed under: Utilities, Macintosh, Productivity, Apple, Freeware

Midnight - deep sleep dashboard widget

by Jason Clarke Jun 11th 2007

Midnight 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.

Tags: Apple, dashboard, dashboard widget, DashboardWidget, deep sleep, DeepSleep, hibernation, Mac, Midnight, Midnight widget, MidnightWidget, sleep

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