Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Mountain Lion Edition

Energy Saver

The Energy Saver program helps you and your Mac in a number of ways. By blacking out the screen after a period of inactivity, it prolongs the life of your monitor. By putting the Mac to sleep after you’ve stopped using it, Energy Saver cuts down on electricity costs and pollution. On a laptop, Energy Saver extends the length of the battery charge by controlling the activity of the hard drive and screen.

Best of all, this pane offers the option to have your computer turn off each night automatically—and turn on again at a specified time in anticipation of your arrival at the desk.

Sleep Sliders

The Energy Saver controls are different on a laptop Mac and a desktop Mac, but both present a pair of sliders (Figure 15-11).

GEM IN THE ROUGH: Mysteries of the Battery Menulet

If you’ve got a laptop, don’t miss the checkbox in Energy Saver called “Show battery status in the menu bar.” It puts a handy status indicator () in the menu bar that keeps you informed of your battery’s life.

Without clicking the menulet, all you see is an icon that represents how full the battery charge is. If you turn on Show Percentage from the menulet’s actual menu, then the menulet can also show how much charge remains, in percentage form.

If you click the menulet, however, you can see an estimate of actual time remaining on your battery charge, in hours:minutes form. (If the battery is charging, then you ...