The Mac mentioned in the best possible way by the smartest character on Stargate Atlantis

[Michael Brian Bentley]

>Why would anyone EVER shutdown a Mac?

My rhetorical answer: only to avoid bugs, and ride on a plane 
legally. Maybe to avoid draining the battery on a long trip?

On weekday afternoons, I sleep the machine after grabbing about 30 
web sites to read on the ferryboat. Waking it up on the boat is NBD, 
it just comes up and everything is sunshine with rainbows arcing 
overhead, flower pedals fluttering about the cabin, soft music and 
quiet chatter. Then the sound of four marine diesel engines kicking 
up froth blows away only some of the idyllic pleasures of reading. I 
continue to read for a half hour then close the machine and haul it 
on home.

When I get home, 50% of the time the machine does not properly wake 
from sleep. By this I mean that the machine is awake, but the screen 
is not. The telltale by the latch button is off, but backlight is off 
and the screen isn't displaying anything even if the backlight were 
on.

After a non-wake, when I close the lid, the telltale turns solid on 
at full, and sits there for a while. Sometimes it will sit there for 
minutes; I can accelerate the process by pulling the power connector 
and forcing the machine to suck electrons from the brobdignagian 
battery of the MBP17 and use the energy saver settings for battery 
power, which have shorter timeouts.

The machine eventually sleeps itself again, and I can open the top 
and get it to wake from sleep properly. I very rarely have to force a 
shutdown and then reboot.

During the morning drill, I never have a problem waking the machine 
from sleep. I do the same sequence of events, except at 7 am.

The one thing I can think of is that I'm rougher on the machine 
getting off of the ferryboat and I jostle the MBP's motion sensor 
during the prep for sleep phase, and that somehow knocks the sleep 
thing out of whack.