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I have an old iMac that I use to charge my iPod. It needs to be “awake” to charge, but it keeps going to sleep. How can I keep it active so that I can charge my iPod? Thanks.

Charging iPods from Mac Laptops

Yes, Mac laptops won’t charge through their USB ports when they are hibernating because the computer stops sending power to the ports. In fact, having an iPod plugged in when the computer isn’t active will actually drain the iPod’s battery. Mac designed its laptops this way to prevent external devices like iPods from overheating if they are left plugged in to the computer for too long, and to protect the computer from being on for too long, especially if you wander away. If you want to leave your iPod charging overnight, you can use an AC adaptor instead, which won’t risk any damage to the computer or the device.

Getting Around iMac Sleep Settings

There are internal settings that you can change to alter the iMac’s sleep settings. The thing about changing the settings is that there might be times when you want the computer to sleep when you aren’t using it, and you might also want to heed the advice that warns against overheating and so you might not want to change the settings permanently. In this case, you can program your computer to keep it active. For example, keep iTunes on repeat so that the program stays on and prevents the computer from hibernating. This way you can let the iPod charge without changing the sleep settings, but be sure not to leave it on too long.

Mac Energy Conservation

To conserve energy, all Macs are programmed with the ability to sleep. When the computer isn’t used for a pre-set amount of time it will go into a low-power mode until you activate it again. The sleep setting also conserves power and battery life. There are times, however, when you want to override the sleep settings in order to burn a CD, download a program or charge your iPod.

Change your Mac Sleep Settings

If you decide that you do want to change the settings, here’s how to do it.

1. Open System Preferences and click Energy Saver, this will show you your current settings
2. Choose Battery or Power Adapter, or both
3. Click the Sleep tab
4. Move the arrows along the sliding scale to change the settings
5. Click the Options tab
6. Make any other adjustments that you want

Good luck!

Whereas on and off might have once been as black and white as, well, black and white, these days there is a sizable and definite grey area in between two seemingly opposite designations. Between on and off, many electronic devices have ‘sleep’ or ‘standby’ modes that aim to save energy or conserve battery power and reduce operational wear and tear on your system while you aren’t actively using it. In the course of fairly regular computer use it is common for people to leave their systems for various reasons and lengths of time…. to check a supplemental resource, to perform another task, to take a break, all with the intention of returning to work soon enough as to not warrant turning the computer off.

There are different power settings available on most modern computers. Users can set their systems to default to sleep mode in particular, pre-set lengths of time. There are numerous benefits to sleep modes; they use less energy than regular power, they return to operational modes more quickly than starting up from off, but critics argue that energy saving modes are actually a huge drain on power sources and resources. If you are concerned about the amount of energy your system uses while it sits idle, you can also set the default power option to turn the computer off if it isn’t used for a length of time.

Microsoft Windows has previously used a mode similar to sleep, called standby, but has sought to improve this feature. In the past it took a fairly long time to both enter and exit the power saving mode. In some Windows versions, when the system enters standby mode, users have to re-log onto the system in order to return to their page or document. In this standby mode the RAM keeps working and reduces everything else. Windows Vista has enhanced this mode with the introduction of hybrid sleep, that also powers down everything but RAM, but also writes the data to the hard drive to ensure it isn’t lost in the event of a power disruption.

When you use sleep mode there are occasionally problems getting the computer to wake back up. Sometimes the screen will come back up and you might even hear promising sounds of your computer coming back to life, but the screen will never get beyond all black and/or blue. When this happens, you might have to power the computer down from the power button and restart. You can also go into your power settings and set the sleep, standby and hibernate modes to Never to prevent this function from operating at all.

Common causes of over-active sleep modes are outdated graphics card drivers. Before you can update drivers, you need to know what graphics card you have on your system. To do this, hit the Start menu, and then select Run. In the search box type dxdiag and then hit OK. When the next window opens select the Display option and then the Device tab for information. Now that you know about your card, check the manufacturer’s website for driver updates and download what you need.