Setting up hibernate mode on the MacBook Pro
Fred sent me a link on how to set up Hibernate with the MacBook Pro (MBP).
Usually I shut down my MBP when I go to sleep because I don’t really like the idea of having it connected to the power supply while I sleep after my battery died under very suspicious circumstances. By default the MBP goes to sleep mode when you close the lid (suspend to RAM), but if it’s not connected to a power supply that obviously consumes some energy from the battery.
When I changed its sleep habits to hibernatemode 1, the MBP does suspend to disk (it saves the content of the memory to the hard disk). It needs a little more time to wake up (compared to suspend to RAM), but now I can sleep without worrying about exploding batteries and return to where I left my work the next morning.
What annoyed me most about the sleep mode is that obnoxious light at the front. At night, it lights up my complete bedroom, effectively keeping me from sleeping until I cover it somehow.
That light is clearly one of the worst design flaws I have ever seen on Apple hardware.
If you’d like to have it sleep during the day (so it wakes up quickly) but hibernate when you put it to bed at night, here’s an entirely physical way of doing so:
http://www.markwheadon.com/blog/2009/01/hibernate-macbook/
Cheers,
Mark
Thanks for the hint, Mark. I am thinking about a timer-based software solution to decide if the MacBook (Pro) should go to sleep or hibernate. Hm. That shouldn’t be too hard…