silly electronic machines

[gusl]

Why does my laptop insist on making a "tada" sound on start-up from "Hybernate", turning off my "mute" button if that's what it takes? Just now, I had to mute it twice, to no avail! I miss having an analog volume dial.

UPDATE: if I "Stand By"(a.k.a. "Sleep" or "Suspend") instead of "Hybernate", it is possible to mute it right after I turn it on, just in time before the "tada". Also, "Stand By" starts up faster!

UPDATE: Also, I'd like to be able to trace which program / Firefox window/tab is making certain sounds. e.g. by seeing a list of programs making calls to the sound APIs + sound drivers.

Comments

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

Start-up? what's that?

Oh, right, once a month I guess I do need to reboot after the updates get installed.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

I have a laptop, and I move around with it.

[wjl.livejournal.com]

caution: stand-by uses more battery power, so if you're accustomed to sleeping your laptop for long periods, you may find it running out of charge faster than you're used to. also, if it runs out completely while in "stand-by", it'll just die without saving any of your information.

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

What operating system are we talking about that is broken in this particular way?

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

My problem is with Win XP. But I think William may have meant that in general.

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

Standby mode takes a piece of a watt to keep the DRAM live, which is just a physical limitation. You'll notice the loss of 10 to 40% of battery daily depending on all the usual things.

My point is that on OSX, when you close the machine under its factory settings, it goes into standby. When the battery gets low while in standby, it hibernates. It's not clear to me that there's any reason why this isn't the default on other operating systems.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

I should test this sometime. I hope wjl is wrong.

[selfishgene.livejournal.com]

Amusing rant on this topic

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, that's is, indeed a nice rant. A microsoft insider mentioned it was basically that the team in charge of the on/off part of the start menu (yes, team) had multiple bosses, each of whom wanted a different set of three choices, and who wouldn't compromise with the other bosses.

[wjl.livejournal.com]

(bit of a late reply, but...) i think your comment only applies to the most recent OS X on the most recent laptops. i'm running 10.4 on a roughly 6-year-old 12-inch powerbook G4, and it doesn't even know about a hibernate -- when i close it, it goes to stand-by, and when the battery runs out, it just shuts off. i've read that i can enable hibernate as the default, but i've never heard that i can switch it to "stand-by, then hibernate".

i'll certainly agree that "stand-by, then hibernate" is the best default, but i can also imagine times when i'd just want to hibernate, like if i'm going on a long trip or something, and i'd rather not waste a charge on my battery for it to decide that it's time to hibernate.

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

Works in 10.3 on my G4 powerbook, and 10.4 on my intel MBP, and 10.5 on my MBA. Except actually currently my MBP's battery is messed up.