Mac OS X Leopard - ARCAism

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CHAPTER 4 SYSTEM PREFERENCES
By default, the Energy Saver shows only a few options. The “Settings for” option is for
portable computers and allows you to set up different energy saving profiles for running on battery
power vs. running while plugged in. The Optimization option provides three preset energy
profiles plus a custom setting. Table 4-3 describes the Energy Saver optimization settings.
Table 4-3. Energy Saver Optimization Settings
Setting Description
Better Energy Savings This is the most aggressive default energy savings setting. It will put your
display to sleep after only 5 minutes, and your entire computer will sleep
after 10 minutes.
Normal This mode will put both your display and computer to sleep after 10 minutes
of idle time. This provides the best balance between energy savings and
performance.
Better Performance This mode won’t put your monitor to sleep until 20 minutes of idle time, and
it will never put your entire computer to sleep.
Custom This mode allows you to customize your power mode by setting the sleep
times for your display and computer yourself. This mode can be set if you
click the Show Details button, which will reveal two tabs presenting many
options for customizing your Energy Saving options.
When you click the Show Details button, the preference pane will expand to reveal two
tabs: the Sleep tab and the Options tab.
The Sleep tab (Figure 4-24) provides a number of sliders to control how long your system
may idle before the display and computer sleep functions kick in. It also provides a rather vague
check box about sleeping the hard drive, which will cause your drive to sleep when it is inactive
(this depends on many things outside of idle time).
Figure 4-24. The Energy Saver preference pane with the Sleep tab revealed