Thursday, December 18, 2008

Tip: Install SmartSleep for OS X

Brent Simmons, maker of the excellent NewNewsWire, linked to Mike D's Virtualization Blog for manually configured how Intel Macs go to sleep, specifically changed the default (suspend to RAM + hibernate to disk) to the old PowerPC based Macs style (suspend to RAM), aka Fast Sleep. Brent then linked to SmartSleep, which is a preference pane that puts a GUI around configured the sleep options that were previously only available in Terminal, and implements SmartSleep. This setting configures OS X to use suspend to RAM when the battery has a strong charge, and turns on hibernate when it drops below a threshold. Sweet!

If you are positive you don't want to use hibernate, you can disable it and then get some disk space back (file size matches much RAM you have installed back).

  1. Close System Preferences
  2. Open Terminal
  3. Type cd /var/vm
  4. Type sudo rm sleepimage

Thursday, December 11, 2008