Hello all -
After years of using "standard desktop" Macs (this msg is being composed on my old (old!) PowerMac 9600 from back about 1996), I broke down and bought a closeout 24" "white" Intel iMac (frys.com had them for $500 off, and I was put off by the reflective, glossy screen of the aluminum iMacs). I also use a PowerMac g/4 MDD (last of the breed).
Till now, I never bothered much setting up a "sleep" routine, I'm used to just pushing the monitor power button off when I'm going to be away for a while. I've got 3rd party USB2 and Firewire cards in the g/4, it won't sleep "properly", in any case.
Just powering down the monitor has worked fine for me for years.
Of course, you can't power down the iMac's monitor without shutting down the computer. There are still times when I have it doing something (defragging or cloning the main system partition to a backup), that I would like to "lower down" the monitor as much as possible, while leaving other operations in progress (hence, no sleep).
I'm looking for a very dark screensaver that all-but "Fades to black". I've browsed around the screensavers included in the "Energy Saver" pref panel, but didn't find any that pretty much darkened the screen. They all still "display an image".
Anyone know of screensavers that really black the LCD out?
Thanks,
- John
In article 46C4E0CB.A6B71AAD@redacted.invalid, John Albert j.albert@redacted.invalid wrote:
Hello all -
After years of using "standard desktop" Macs (this msg is being composed on my old (old!) PowerMac 9600 from back about 1996), I broke down and bought a closeout 24" "white" Intel iMac (frys.com had them for $500 off, and I was put off by the reflective, glossy screen of the aluminum iMacs). I also use a PowerMac g/4 MDD (last of the breed).
Till now, I never bothered much setting up a "sleep" routine, I'm used to just pushing the monitor power button off when I'm going to be away for a while. I've got 3rd party USB2 and Firewire cards in the g/4, it won't sleep "properly", in any case.
Just powering down the monitor has worked fine for me for years.
Of course, you can't power down the iMac's monitor without shutting down the computer. There are still times when I have it doing something (defragging or cloning the main system partition to a backup), that I would like to "lower down" the monitor as much as possible, while leaving other operations in progress (hence, no sleep).
I'm looking for a very dark screensaver that all-but "Fades to black". I've browsed around the screensavers included in the "Energy Saver" pref panel, but didn't find any that pretty much darkened the screen. They all still "display an image".
Anyone know of screensavers that really black the LCD out?
I find setting the display to sleep works for me. See the Energy Saver preference pane.
On 2007-08-16 18:42:02 -0500, John Albert j.albert@redacted.invalid said:
Of course, you can't power down the iMac's monitor without shutting down the computer.
Actually, with the Energy Saver system preference panel, you can set the display to sleep after so many minutes. Sleep is a very low power mode, which is about as close as you can get to "off" without shutting down the computer.
I'll answer my own posting with a solution I found.
There's a small freeware application called "Brightness Control" that can dim the monitor, all the way down to dark if you wish.
Launch Brightness Control, drag the slider down as far as you like. When you want to get back to normal, you can either drag the slider back, or just quit the app. The setting you quit at is retained during the next launch.
Warning: don't drag it down to completely dark, or you may not be able to restore the screen brightness. I found this out the hard way, and had to fiddle with the power-on key (follwed by "s") to shut the thing down.
When I restarted and launched Brightness Control again - yup, right down to black again! I had to dig into the preferences and delete the p.list (I think that's the proper name for it) so I could start the app up again normally. :)
- John
In article 46C4E0CB.A6B71AAD@redacted.invalid, John Albert j.albert@redacted.invalid wrote:
Of course, you can't power down the iMac's monitor without shutting down the computer. There are still times when I have it doing something (defragging or cloning the main system partition to a backup), that I would like to "lower down" the monitor as much as possible, while leaving other operations in progress (hence, no sleep).
The iMac will power down the monitor automatically. Look in "Energy Saver" for the settings.