Chapter 16. Managing Power and Accessibility Options

IN THIS CHAPTER:

123 Set the Computer's Sleep Time

124 Schedule Automatic Startup and Shutdown

125 Choose a Power-Saving Profile

126 Monitor Your Laptop's Battery Life

127 Talk to Your Computer and Have It Talk Back to You (VoiceOver)

128 Zoom In

129 Choose How the Computer Alerts You

130 Use Sticky Keys

131 Control the Mouse Pointer Using the Keyboard

132 Add a Keyboard Shortcut

"One size fits all" is a statement that never applies to computer users. We all need our computers to do something different, and not just because our tastes in desktop backgrounds vary. Sometimes, our own practical constraintsmobile energy needs, physical accessibility challenges, and so ondictate that our computers must adapt to us, rather than we to them.

Whether your Mac is a laptop or a desktop computer, the practical fact is that you can't just leave it running all the time. Electricity costs money, and besides, you probably instinctively know that the lifetime of your screen and your hard drive can be extended if they can be shut down occasionally.

Nobody, however, wants to have to boot up their computer from scratch every time they sit down. That's why Mac OS X supports sleep , a suspended -activity mode in which the computer uses almost no power, but can be awakened almost instantly by pressing a key or moving the mouse. You already know how to put your computer to sleep or wake it up (choose Sleep from the Apple menu, orif your computer is a laptopsimply close the lid); this chapter will discuss some of the finer points of power management, enabling you to tune how your computer automatically deals with inactivity and variable power conditions.Beyond simple power management, Mac OS X has a number of features designed to make life easier for everybody who uses a Mac, under whatever circumstances. Apple has had a long history of making computers that are usable not just by the fully physically capable, but by people who have any of the disabilities or challenges that made traditional computing difficult. The Mac was first to market with text-to-speech synthesis, for example, and there have almost always been ways to control the computer using only the keyboard, rather than relying on the mouse. Mac OS X, with its many graphical and architectural advances, introduces even more accessibility features that depend more heavily on sophisticated graphics and sound processing, under the collective name Universal Access. Zoom lets you immediately magnify the screen to any level you choose. Sticky Keys lets you press multiple modifier keys in sequence rather than at the same time, displaying their floating icons in the upper-right corner of the screen. With VoiceOver , you can command your computer by speaking to it, and you can make the computer speak back to you, reading alert messages, information about the system, or even complete documents in a human voice of your choice.