Filed under: Hardware, PowerBook
Safe Sleep for new 15 and 17 inch Powerbooks
When the new Powerbook announcement was made we missed the fact that the two larger models (15 and 17 inch) include a new "Safe Sleep" feature. Macbidouille even had a chance to test this new feature. They report that the feature does indeed work well and takes about ten seconds to fully wake up. What's behind the magic?
Basically, a snapshot of your system is saved to the harddrive before you or the Powerbook sets itself to sleep. When you put in a new battery or reconnect it to a power source, the system wakes from deep slumber exactly to where you left it. Crazy cryogenic technology? Nah, but it will save you from losing that last bit of work you were doing before your battery fizzled out.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Andrew Escobar said 9:11PM on 11-11-2005
It works great. Its an extension of just regular Sleep mode, because it saves the entire session too the hard disk. Very nice boot screen too.
To learn how to enable Safe Sleep on *any* mac running 10.4.3, see this blog post:
http://www.andrewescobar.com/archive/2005/11/11/how-to-safe-sleep-your-mac/
Its easy to do, and there are screen-shot of the boot screen.
Reply
Ian Alexander said 8:47PM on 11-13-2005
Ahh... I eagerly await the day when they invent non-volatile
memory, so we don't need hibernate/safe sleep functions.
Reply
John Laur said 5:36PM on 10-24-2005
OK so OS X has hibernate support now? How can we get this feature on the mac mini? This would be ideal for use in a carpc where the (admittedly small) drain from a sleeping mac is counterproductive.
Reply
Patrick Sikorski said 5:39PM on 10-24-2005
So this is like the Windows Hibernate Feature. Wow, that only took... what, 3 or 4 years?
Reply
Marc said 5:49PM on 10-24-2005
Very much off-topic, and known already by the dutch readers: that beautiful picture on the desktop is the 'Erasmus' bridge in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. :)
Reply
Samual Icky said 6:38PM on 10-24-2005
I'm sorry am I missing something... but what makes this cool or topical? At any rate didn't the orginal ibooks have something like this? I recall having something like this for a while... then apple axed it as it just had way to many issues... didn't they... I'm almost certain they had the save RAM contents for reboot... I'm thinking late OS 9 days.
Reply
R.I. Pienaar said 6:43PM on 10-24-2005
Yawn, soon this site will comment on features that was delivered by trivial bits of shareware even on MS-DOS as being ground breaking and worthy of falling on your knees chanting to to some bloke in a black polar neck. Oh, too late.
Reply
Wesley Mason said 6:45PM on 10-24-2005
A) No it's not hibernate as it's doing _both_ suspend to RAM _and_ suspend to hard drive, it's a back-up feature meaning if the power completely fails while sleeping it will still be able to restore from the saved system image on the disk, the advantage of this is that you still have immediate restore when awaking and power hasn't ran out during sleep, the disadvantage is you can't fully hibernate and save your power.
It's cool and topical because this is a feature that has just been reintroduced (or perhaps introduced) and not discussed in the least.
Reply
pnarse said 6:57PM on 10-24-2005
The powerbooks seemed to stay in sleep for a while even with the battery out anyways :)
I've taken an empty battery out many times with the machine in sleep, rummaged around in my bag to get the spare and plugged that in to resume right where I left off.... What's new?
Reply
Rob Erekson said 7:18PM on 10-24-2005
My PowerBook G4 (bought in May) already does this...it isn't anything new is it?
Reply
johnny said 4:50AM on 10-25-2005
Doesn't this mean that you could have workstations that start in about 10 seconds (or less, with faster harddrives, memory, cpu...)?
With other words, do you want to wait on a pc for about 30 seconds-1 minute or wait for a mac for less than 10 seconds to boot?
This sounds great to me...
Reply
Nat said 8:00PM on 10-25-2005
I think they had this a while back. If i am not mistaken, this was on the original ibook clamshell. Someone said it was like, you can store your iBook on a shelf for a few years, have its battery drain out and then plug it in a while later and still have all your work and stuff just as you left it. Apple soon removed the so called feature in an energy manager update because there were many problems with it. I could be totally wrong, but on the opposing side, this isn't anything new, rather something that is re-introduced.
Reply