MacOSG: sleep vs. ‘deep sleep’ mode
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Dec 1, 2006 at 12:01pm
By Dave Merten
If you own a late model PowerBook, MacBook, MacBook Pro or an Intel Apple Desktop, and are running Mac OS X Tiger v10.4.3 or newer, you can now put your computer in a “deep sleep” mode. What is that? Well, the OS X default sleep mode is a “hardware suspend” mode, during which your RAM is still powered on.
When you put your computer in a “deep sleep” mode, you are actually putting it in a “software suspend” mode, where the computer consumes no power while sleeping. Can you see the advantages using this mode if you’re a laptop user? You could put your laptop to sleep for an extended period of time without worrying about the battery being dead when you come back to use it. There is a slight price to pay for using this mode though, as the wake up process takes more time to complete.
Below is a progress bar you will see as the computer is waking up from “deep sleep.”
So how can you get your Mac to enter this “deep sleep” mode? Well, one way is using your Terminal, but who wants to get that out every time you want to put your computer to sleep? I found a great Dashboard widget by Matthieu Beaumel, cleverly called “Deep Sleep.” It’s easy to install and works slick. Once it’s installed, just open Dashboard and click on the ‘Deep Sleep’ icon that’s pictured below.
A few seconds later, your computer’s comatose. To wake it back up, you simply press the Power button.
You can download the Deep Sleep widget here.
So what do you do with your Mac? Use the sleep function frequently, shutdown when not in use, or leave it running 24/7?
The Mac Owners Support Group, aka MacOSG, was conceived in February, 2004 as the G5 Owners Support Group by Dave Merten, a former “Focus on Mac Support” guide at About.com. After purchasing a DOA Power Mac G5, and noticing on Apple Discussion Boards that people seemed to be having a lot of common hardware problems with them, Merten decided to open a support site for Power Mac G5 owners. He called it G5 Owners Support Group, registered the G5support.com domain and also applied to Apple to become an online Apple User Group.
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 10,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
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