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.

[brandon2084]

You might be having a SafeSleep issue. The Wifi shouldn't even be active while it is sleeping. Try resetting the power manager (the Air's documentation should say how, or somewhere on the apple support site)

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.

[brandon2084]

[garry_k]

As I reads Blogs like this and many others as well as the tech news item about Apple products that aren't meeting expectations, I have detected a slow but certain downward spiral. Apple is slipping because it can't keep up the quality of it's wide ranging products and the fact it's has "bitten of more than it can chew". They desparately want business recognition and still want to hold the attention the "Gadget Toy Crowd", but they are slipping down the slippery slope of bad engineering in order to keep pumping out new products that will keep them in the news. Maybe they should worry less about glitzy new products and worry more about quality.

[mreiher]

gary_k.... just so you know, there is nothing wrong with his MBA... he has a setting wrong or other software interfering. One guy's complaint about a problem does not mean they are all like that. None of the 4 MacBooks in our house run like that... BUT, we did have one that did the same thing (i.e. drained the battery in sleep mode).... it was an issue with some software my son-in-law had installed that was the culprit. I think if Dave digs a little deeper he'll find one of a couple things... an application causing the problem... a setting wrong in his OS... or some sort of odd corruption to a system file that is not letting his MBA really go to sleep.

[saunderscc]

my macbook has this same problem. i have to close it, open it, and close it again to get it to sleep. it doesn't recognize on the first close. i can't find any setting that says only go to sleep on second close. it's a software glitch that hasn't been addressed/fixed.

[john55440]

A problem made worse by the fact that MacBook Air doesn't have a user replaceable battery, like other computers.

[daverosenberg]

Thanks all, I found a page (http://paulstamatiou.com/2007/12/06/how-to-quickly-sleep-your-macbook) that showed me a command line way to turn off the safe sleep mode.

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0

[J.G.]

I have had two MacBook Air laptops. The first was purchased Feb. 6 online, so I have as much experience as just about anyone. Neither of my MacBook Air computers had a problem with sleep, whether Airport was on or off.

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.