[TheaterCub]

Every time I put my 17inch to sleep (haha), i lose all my internet connections (AOL, Yahoo messenger). I have tried finding a pref to help stop this, but to no avail--am I missing something? Also, how do I do a panic or dead pixel check-thanks!

[TheaterCub]

ANyone?

[MusicalTone]

U using a dialup or broadband. Cable connection or Airport Extreme?

[superlarry]

when you put your computer to sleep, it cuts power to the modem and the network ports to save power. this disconnects you.
dead pixels should be relatively obvious as pixels on the screen that don't change color when they should - they'll stick as one color all the time.
a panic is pretty much a crash, and it only happens when something very odd happens, which should be rare. you can't really do a panic check - you can just be happy when they don't happen, which is most of the time. the two things most likely to cause panics are overheating and the finder's built-in networking, i think (this networking is ftp sites and windows computers whose files show up on your desktop).

[romeosc]

You can change preferences in System Preferences/ Energy Saver to just dim screen.... then computer maintains connections, etc.

[tooki]

Yup. If the computer is asleep, the modem, ethernet*, Airport, etc are all turned off, so obviously any program that was using them will lose its connection. (Some programs, like the Finder and AIM, are sleep-aware, and will reconnect upon wake, if you have a non-dialup connection.)

tooki

* The ethernet ports on modern Macs and PCs are capable of something called "wake-on-LAN," where a *tiny* little part of the ethernet chip stays awake just enough to understand a special "wake-up" signal, which then triggers the ethernet chip to wake the computer. On Macs, this is enabled (by default, turned on) in the Energy Saver options as "Wake for network administrative access".