To sleep or hibernate?
Some evolutionary flaw has made it so that human beings cannot hibernate through winter. This would be a worthy thing for us to learn and for modern science to perfect.
Modern Macs at least have the option. Instead of just sleeping you can set them to hibernate; a sleep state in which the contents of RAM memory are written to the hard disk, to be remembered when the Mac is switched on again, and presenting you with things exactly as they were when you last looked at the screen.
However until I came across SmartSleep I thought I had to decide in advance which sleep state to select for my MacBook Pro. This was somewhat troublesome because normal sleep is fast - as soon as I close the lid. Hibernation takes longer as the 2 GB of memory are written to disk for safe keeping. That takes 40-50 seconds in which time it is best not to move or pick up the Mac. Now with SafeSleep my Mac decides depending on how much battery power it has remaining. If the battery is getting low it elects to hibernate and power off, if there is more it sleeps instantly, and I see the slowly flashing LED to let me know it is sleeping softly. Ahh.
