what to do with apple laptop when not using it?

Leave it open and let sleep or just close the lid. No need to shut down. Personally, I never shut down, and just sleep the MBP. I carry it to an from work daily, etc., all asleep. I only restart when a Software Update requires me to do that. Been running that way for >3 years with the MBP, and for many more years with PowerBooks before that.

Wow, leave it running that long, I am impressed. I hope I am just as impressed when I receive my new one in a week.

I've done the same thing for years. That's just the way it's done. Awesome.

It makes a great bookend! 🙂

Same thing here -- in fact, it's the recommended method for all Apple portables -- do NOT turn it off, just close the lid and let it sleep. I've gone months and months without rebooting. I only do so when new software needs to be installed or the rare occasion that Safari is messed up (which happens when you use a lot of flash-enabled sites).

Start thinking like a mac user -- you put to sleep, you don't turn off.

Sorry guys. I hate to crash the party but this is directly from the user guide:

Shutting Down Your MacBook Pro
If you aren’t going to use your MacBook Pro for a day or two, it’s best to shut it down.
The sleep indicator light goes on briefly during the shutdown process.
To shut down your computer, do one of the following:
m Choose Apple () > Shut Down from the menu bar.
m Press the power (®) button and click Shut Down in the dialog that appears.
If you plan to store your MacBook Pro for an extended period of time, see “Storing Your
MacBook Pro” on page 108 for information about how to prevent your battery from
draining completely.

cmods: Yes, it does say that. But the only reason to pay attention to it is to avoid running your battery down during sleep, which happens unavoidably at a rate of at least 1% per hour when the machine isn't connected to AC power — and considerably more in some machines. If you know from careful monitoring that your MBP loses, say, 12% of its battery charge while sleeping for 8 hours, it follows that the battery will be completely drained after something like 66 hours of sleep. Complete discharges are harder on your battery than partial ones. To avoid them, you'll want to shut the machine down instead of sleeping it whenever you expect not to use it for, say, longer than 48-60 hours and can't leave the AC adapter connected.

If you don't expect to be away from the machine that long or you can leave it connected to AC power, there's no reason at all to shut it down — and because I'm seldom or never away from mine for even as long as 24 hours, I never shut mine down. Never have, with any Powerbook or MBP for the last 15 years.

Message was edited by: eww

Message was edited by: eww

Other than because of installations, the main reason for shutting down a plugged-in Mac is energy conservation. Except in extreme cases, Macs actually perform better and better when left on longer and longer since the OS stores frequently used instructions in the kernel file system buffer cache. Here is a dated, but good read on OS X memory: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20010613140025184. I am assuming no significant details have changed since the read way written.

Maybe I'm lucky, but I never shutdown the computer unless it's going to be unhooked from the power adapter for days/weeks. I sleep the computer when I'm not using it by closing the lid (unless time machine is running when I am done working). I've been doing this since my G3 Lombard days, and I've never had a battery die on me, in fact the computers are old and decrepit and the batteries are still going strong. With the power adapter plugged into the computer there doesn't seem to be a right or wrong answer to your question.

Sheldon

I'm another one who rarely if ever shuts down the laptop, and I'm on my 4th laptop Mac now (nothing wrong with any of the ones I had, in fact, they're all still being used, I just moved onto newer models).

On just about all of them, all I ever did was closed the lid and let them sleep. Which is wonderful because it means that whatever you were doing, even if it was started last night, you open up the laptop and you can go right back to where you left off. The only time I'd shut my laptops down beyond re-starting after an update is if they were going to be unplugged for a long time and I don't want to drain the battery, if they were going to be left untouched for a several days (rare, as I'm almost never without my laptop; it gets opened and worked on at least once a day), or if I was going through airport security.

This last was my own paranoia. I just wanted to make sure the laptop was going to stay as safe and secure as I could make it as it was removed from its bag, put in a bin, x-rayed, put back, shoved under a seat and such.