Blink. __________ Blink. ___________ Blink.
What happens when you put your Mac portable to sleep? This:
- The Ethernet port turns off (see Note below)
- Expansion card slots (such as PCMCIA) turn off
- The built-in modem turns off (see Note below)
- An AirPort card, if present, turns off (see Note below)
- The USB connection only responds to the power key on an external keyboard (see Tip below)
- The optical media drive spins down
- Audio input and output turns off
- Keyboard illumination, if a feature of your portable computer, turns off
Computer Sleep Mode == Human sleep. Shutting down your computer == Death.
Apple also says:
As you might guess, a computer uses considerable less power when in sleep mode then when awake. The computer will continue to power RAM in sleep mode, so that whatever was in RAM when the computer went to sleep will still be there when the computer wakes.
What that document doesn’t mention, is the pulsating LED. On for 1 second, dims and goes off for 2 seconds, and then comes on again. Like it is breathing. Some people cannot sleep with this pulsating LED in the room, “…the light on the screen flashes when the computer is “sleeping” and i just want to turn it off.” So, you may be asking yourself, why doesn’t he just shut it off?.
a lot of times before i go to bed i have a ton of webpages that pdfs open which i am bouncing between. I want an application that will record which save that state and then allow me to reopen that next time i start my machine.
i mean, i’d want something that’ll save everything thats open, and when i turn on the computer again, i run the app and it goes back to where i left off, with the apps open, and at the last spot i was.
any os x apps that can do that?
He wants the benefits of sleep mode to have his work right where he left it, but he doesn’t want to use sleep mode, but he cannot turn off his computer because he has open PDFs that he wants to go back to the next day and there is no OS X app that can do that, but he could use sleep mode to accomplish this, but since the LED pulsates, he cannot.
Phew.
Solution.
This baffled the other IRC chatters. Did I mention this took place on IRC? If not, it did. Someone busted out the Universal Problem Solving Tool Kit:
- ME: I just want to get this straight, you want to turn your machine off because the little LED blinks?
- ANOTHER DUDE: Duct tape.
Once again, ladies and gentlemen, duct tape to the rescue.
As silly as it sounds, a good piece of thick tape does wonders to prevent that light from keeping you up.
I have six computers (that’s right… six!) in the room I sleep in, and I have black electrical tape covering the LED of each of the power buttons and disk activity lights. Otherwise, my room would be awash with blue, purple, green, & red LED lights constently on or blinking.
The other solution I have found, turn surface of the device that has the lights away from you, so it casts the light elsewhere in the room. I have a mouse that I used to unplug at night because of the ammount of light it put off at night. I found that if I turn the mouse 90 degrees, I don’t see the light from my bed, and I can sleep peacefully.
Now if I could only do something about those case fans on those computers…
Other uses of duct tape [green in Korea] include the following:
http://sungnyemun.org/weblog2/?theDate=200403142
My first thought as I was reading this was “black electrical tape”, like the NPR Car Talk guys always suggest for irritating but un-shut-off-able dashboard lights. For something pretty and shiny, though, I would suggest gaffer’s tape, as it’s less likely to damage any surface.
Err, homeslice needs Saft. Among a million other awesome features, it saves browser state even through a shutdown (or crash!) best shareware i’ve bought in OS X, for sure.
I feel the need to clarify that this obviously requires him to read the PDFs in safari, but if he’s that concerned about it…