Mac OS X Energy Saver

At the beginning of this week I was tweaking my screensaver and sleep settings to try to save some energy. I ended up discovering the “Schedule” option of the Energy Saver preference pane in the Mac OS X System Preferences. Here I discovered that you can schedule your computer to shutdown at a certain time and day, as well as the time for it start back up. Typically, I am pretty energy conscience in regards to most things; however, when it comes to my computer I have been known to leave it on for months. Of course that is with sleep turned on and requiring no crashes. It is not a favorite task of mine to get my applications and windows all set up after powering back on, but I decided if I can automate the process why not give it a shot. Therefore, I decided to schedule my iMac to shutdown every night, at a point when I am typically off of it, and then start back up at the time I would be back from work at the earliest, on weekdays. I have woke up a couple mornings thus far this week and decided to check something quickly on my computer, and have noticed it is shutdown. So, it appears to be working and is sort of nice to know I am not powering the thing all night, though there is something still consuming some power I am sure, as it knows when to turn back on. I was going to stay up late enough last night to see if it would shutdown while I am still using it, but missed that deadline by about 10 minutes. All in all, this is a nifty little way to save some power and it is automated. It probably has some other benefits, such as not leaving your computer available for hacking attempts all night. I will continue using this function, so long as I do not find it to have any annoyance beyond having to reopen some applications after it powers back on.