quick question for g4 iMac users...

wtmcgee

wtmcgee

Registered
i'm about to get one of the new iMacs - and when looking at pictures and video of it, something hit me - how do you turn off the monitor? is there a switch somewhere? just something i was hoping someone could shed some light on.
 
Well, there really isn't a way to do this. Yeah, I'm as shocked as you are. I really wonder why they did it that way... but it doesn't bother me too much, as the screen simply goes on when it needs to and goes off when it goes to sleep... a little odd though, as sometimes you want the screen off for privacy reasons while the computer stays on (compressing sensitive files, for example)... but unfortunately, it can't be done.

I love this thing anyway, though... read my review, "This is hopefully the best iMac review", in this forum if you want to hear my take on the system...
 
great - thanks for the input guys.
as long as there's SOME way to save the life of the thing (and that power save monitor off thing will do the trick), then i'm okay. i just thought the only way to turn off, or power down the monitor, was to turn off the entire system.
 
10 seconds? What machine are you running? OS X wakes up in 6 seconds on my G4 (and that includes waking up the monitor, which probably takes most of the time anyway) and less than 3 seconds on my LCD iMac.... :)

I've never shut my iMac down once, and I've only had to force-restart twice in nearly two weeks, one time from a kernel panic (all my documents were autosaved thanks to Office v.X, fortunately) and one from something that was entirely my fault. I love OS X!
 
yea, my main concern was the fact that i typically leave my computer on for days, weeks at a time - and was concerned about the life of the monitor on the new iMac. how terrible would it be for it to crap out after a year or two because i leave it on a lot?! but if it has energy saving and sleep mode, that's more than enough.... once again, thanks for the info guys :D

Originally posted by testuser
The great thing about Mac OS X is the sleep mode. Instead of waiting a long time (2 min) for your computer to start up after a shut-down, the sleep feature allows you to wake the computer nearly instantly (10 sec)!

Furthermore, there is not much of an energy difference between a sleeping Mac, and one that is turned off (less than 5 Watts). This difference is less than leaving on a night-light.

Power draw when shut off =~ 10 Watts
Power draw during sleep =~ 15 Watts
[/QUOTE
Click to expand...
 
If you wanted the monitor off you could always just turn the brightness down all the way. It can be done right from the keyboard.
 
True, I'd love to have that ability but unfortunately you CAN'T do it from the keyboard. Pretty strange for them to make a whole new (white with totally different key response, so I know they definitely worked on it for a while) Pro Keyboard and didn't include that. It's odd.

The only way I've found to turn the brightness down is System Preferences-->Displays-->Brightness....
 
ok, for all you people who say it ISN'T possible to sleep the computer, you aren't looking hard enough.

Goto the Energy Saver section of System Preferences, and turn hard disk sleep to Never, while keeping Monitor sleep to whenever (5-20 min, usually).

That way, you can download a file or keep a web server running while the monitor sleeps, allow other processes to run, etc. etc.

Simple as that.
-pancakechef
 
Originally posted by Bluefusion
True, I'd love to have that ability but unfortunately you CAN'T do it from the keyboard. Pretty strange for them to make a whole new (white with totally different key response, so I know they definitely worked on it for a while) Pro Keyboard and didn't include that. It's odd.

The only way I've found to turn the brightness down is System Preferences-->Displays-->Brightness....
Click to expand...

You sure you cannot control the brightness from the keyboard? I'm on a G4 cube with a black Pro Keyboard and you can control the brightness directly from the keyboard by using the F14 and F15 keys (F14 dims the screen incrementally, F15 brightens it incrementally). Are you absolutely positive this doesn't work on a new iMac?
 
Holy crap SimX! THANK YOU! How on earth did you know that? It DOES work, except for the one annoying fact that the screen cannot be dimmed to pure black, but oh well (it goes down to a very dim setting instead)... I''ve been trying to use F1-F2 because I'm used to how it works on iBooks... well, that's certainly cool. Why doesn't Apple tell anyone this? That's a good thing to know about, especially when working in very dark rooms... going into Sys Prefs is really annoying...

Again, thanks for the tip... I had no idea about that.
 
Bluefusion: You learn these things when you're on this board all the time and when you always read MacFixIt.com's website every morning. You also learn it when you use your Mac a lot of the day, like I do. :) And for reference, there are PLENTY of things that Apple doesn't tell us users -- it's all about finding them out. :) The only thing I really miss about Mac OS 9 in Mac OS X now is the lack of easter eggs. :(

Yes, it is true that the F14 key does not dim the screen to total black, but this is true only for desktops. The brightness keys on TiBooks and iBooks dim them to a total black at the bottom setting (of course they don't use the F14/F15 keys). It would be nice to have a "mute screen" key that would just turn the screen to all black. I guess, though, that's what the Energy Saver preference pane is there for. :) Just set it to go black at 30 minutes, and all's well!
 
If you're comfortable with applescript you can set sleep mode in there, it is an under Finder. Useful if you want to set a half-dozen big tasks then call it a night.
Oh, and BTW, if you're talking about putting the screen to sleep and leaving the system running then you can do this by setting display sleep time under energy prefs, and set system sleep time to never - not hard disk as PancakeChef suggests. Hard disk sleep sleeps hard-disks only, a specified time after the hard disk has been used, and I set this to its minimum to keep things quiet. There is a momentary (half second) delay accessing the hard disk from sleep, but I prefer it this way.
 
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