April 2, 2008 8:12 PM PDT
MacBook Air major annoyance--when sleep doesn't mean sleep
My one major pet peeve with the MacBook Air is that no matter what I do, it seems that this machine never goes fully to sleep. Somehow the battery is being drained (albeit at a slower rate) when I set the computer to "sleep" or when I close the lid.
This has become an incredible annoyance as my main purpose for this laptop was to be able to use it on the fly. Lately I've found that I have run the whole battery out in about 8 hours with less than one hour of actual usage. At first I thought it was because the Airport was constantly scanning, which often drained my old MacBook Pro.
My two theories are that if you bump the machine it somehow triggers the hard drive to spin up or that there is a software glitch that needs to get fixed.
Dave Rosenberg is currently working on a new stealth start-up based in San Francisco. He is Co-founder of MuleSource, an open source integration and infrastructure software company and is a recognized thought-leader in open source software and service-oriented architecture. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
You can also disable safesleep with the following terminal command:
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0
Keep in mind that this will disable hibernation, so if your battery completely drains you will loose data. Sleep and Wake are much faster and more reliable though.
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0
My recommendation is that you make sure your MacBook Air is really closed since there is no feedback from a locking mechanism. Try putting the computer to sleep and then closing the lid.
BTW, naysayers, NYT tech columnist David Pogue admitted he was so smitten by his review loaner that he purchased a MacBook Air of his own in his most recent column.