since i'm on a macbook, i let mine sleep as long as I do. but shut it down about once or twice a week when I really won't use it for a while.
sleep most of the time. I just shut it down when I'm going to clean it or when I won't use it for a couple of days. But mostly, it's just sleeping. I've been using a mac since early 200's and there've been times when i haven't shut it down for month's time and I didn't notice any slowdowns in the performance.
there is no actual significant difference between shutdown and sleep in mac because the time utilized by the unit is really short as compared to windows. i usually shut down my mac since the boot time is fast anyway. that's the inherent privileges of mac which windows, through windows 7, is trying to emulate.
Curious question. If your laptop goes to sleep without you closing the lid, does YM sign out automatically? I could have sworn it would stay online before.
mig, from my experience, it does sign out. then it will connect automatically when you wake up your mac
I did this experiment on my Mac Mini. I did not shut it down for around a month, and a few times I put it to sleep. Performance was still good, but during the last week things were starting to slow down considerably. A quick check of iStat revealed a lot of page-ins, and my available RAM was almost depleted.
It is always been my habit to shut down all the time when moving my laptop. I guess because I had one bad experience with a PC laptop of mine where the notebook woke up while still in my backpack. When I reached my destination I pulled out my notebook and it was burning hot! Nothing was damaged, fortunately but I would not want anything like that to happen to any of my notebook computers again!
Yup! In my case, though, when YM reconnects, the memory usage of that program spikes. As such, I prefer to quit YM before putting the unit to sleep.
I have a mid-2009 MBP 13" and it does wake up in its sleep sometimes, mostly when I'm in transit. Sleep is cool when it's just in one place. Once you're on the go, shutdown is the best. I work in the car sometimes, though, so I only put it to sleep if I'm in a car and the laptop is safe on a flat surface like the car seat or on my lap.
I sleep when I know I'm going to be using it after a few minutes or when I'm just moving from one place to another. I Deep Sleep (freeware download widget) during long hours of not using it (i.e. going home, etc.) and even at night when I'm going to sleep already. I shut down only when the battery is low or when I know I won't be using it for the entire day.