Important Energy Saver Settings


You can customize your Energy Saver settings so your laptop's power management is optimized for battery power, which lets you get as much computing time as possible out of your limited power supply. When you're on the go, these settings can make a difference in whether or not you run out of power before you get a chance to plug in or recharge.

To customize your Energy Saver settings, open System Preferences (from the Apple menu), then click the "Energy Saver" icon to open the window shown below.

The Options Pane

Click the "Options" tab to show settings that affect power consumption and performance.

To optimize your laptop for maximum battery life:

  • "Settings for" pop-up menu. Choose "Battery."

  • "optimization" pop-up menu. Choose "Better Battery Life."

    When Battery is selected in "Settings for," the "Optimization" menu contains presets that optimize energy settings as Better Battery Life, Normal, Better Performance, or Custom.

    When you move the sliders (shown on the next page) to change any of the default Sleep settings, the "Optimization" pop-up menu automatically changes to "Custom."

  • "Show battery status in the menu bar" checkbox. When this option is selected, the battery icon (shown below) appears in your menu bar. Click the icon to open a menu of useful Energy Saver commands.

    Hover your pointer over the "Show" option to see a sub-menu from which you can choose how to display the battery status.

    You can also choose to "Open Energy Saver..." from the bottom of the menu for quick and easy access to these settings.

The Sleep Pane

Click the "Sleep" tab (circled below) to show settings that can lengthen the life of your battery and of your screen. Sleep is a low-power mode that conserves the battery power.

  • Inactivity sliders. Use the top slider to set how long the computer will be inactive before it puts the hard drive to sleep.

    Use the bottom slider to determine how long before the display (the screen) goes to sleep. Setting the display to go to sleep after a short period of inactivity not only saves a lot of battery power, but it prolongs the life of the screen.

  • Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible. Check the box at the bottom-left of the window to make the hard disk spin down whenever it feels a need to. For instance, while working on a project, the hard drive can go to sleep until you decide to save the file. It takes a couple of seconds to spin back up when you wake the computer (by moving the mouse, tapping a key, or saving a file). This can be inconvenient, but it's not as inconvenient as having your battery fail.

Set a Schedule

Your Mac laptop lets you set a time to automatically start up or shut down your laptop. Use the pop-up menus to tell your laptop when to start up, wake up, shut down, or sleep. If you keep a pretty regular schedule, you can have your Mac wake up every morning at, say 6 A.M., so by the time you're up and showered and have had your coffee, your Mac is waiting for you. And you can be assured your Mac will shut down for you at night no matter how late you're out.

Of course, the laptop screen must be open (not necessarily awake) for the schedule to take effect appropriately.




Macs on the Go!(c) Guide to Mobile Computing for Mac Laptops Using Mac OS X
Macs on the Go
ISBN: 0321247485
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 119

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